


Dreamers of the Day

by Eireann, mandassina



Series: Dreams [6]
Category: Star Trek: Enterprise
Genre: Angst and Drama, Power Play
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-18
Updated: 2021-03-11
Packaged: 2021-03-13 13:46:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 249,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28779243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eireann/pseuds/Eireann, https://archiveofourown.org/users/mandassina/pseuds/mandassina
Summary: Follow-up to 'A World for Dreams'.Having destroyed two of the ruthless Triad who effectively controlled the Empire, Commodore Trip Tucker now has the task of controlling and trying to turn the third - the most cruel and dangerous enemy he has ever had...
Series: Dreams [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/926886
Comments: 43
Kudos: 3
Collections: Reed's Armory Collection





	1. 1-5

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Star Trek and all its intellectual property belongs to Paramount/CBS. No infringement intended, no money made.
> 
> Author's Note 1. Although I have chosen not to use the Archive Warnings, this version of the Mirror Universe is brutal. I have tried to avoid graphic descriptions, but there is material that some may find unpleasant, including non-con and self-harm. If any of these offend you, or may act as triggers, please do not read it.
> 
> Author's Note 2. There are a total of 164 chapters so each 'chapter' here (except of course the last) contains five individual chapters. The story picks up immediately after the events of the preceding story in this series, and will be extremely hard to understand unless that story has been read.

**Dreamers of the Day**

**All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find it was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible.**

**\--T.E. Lawrence a.k.a. Lawrence of Arabia**

**Chapter One**

**Breathing Space**

_Commodore Charles Tucker III_

I turn away from the viewport and make up my mind to allow myself six hours of peace after the explosion. After the past year, I think I've earned a little breathing space, especially since I'll be up to my ass in alligators by tomorrow, and I'll need to be sharp to avoid getting bit.

I make sure I'll get six hours of rest by disabling every damned alert I have. Every single thing in my quarters that beeps, chimes, buzzes, bleeps, chirps, whistles, or warbles is off – except for one. I left orders that I was only to be disturbed if the Empress called or we had another disaster that required my attention. Since I've even disconnected my comm. panel and door buzzer, if somebody gets the big idea that something just _can't_ wait, whoever they might send to disturb me will be guaran-damn-teed to exhaust all other options before coming to my quarters and banging on my door.

When T'Pol comes creeping out of the bathroom with all the caution of a doe moving from the safety of the tree line into an open meadow, I present her with the clothing Eloise had delivered just before I issued my do-not-disturb order. It's a prototype of the new women's uniform I'm planning to propose to the Empress.

About a month ago, I'd noticed that my female engineers lost more time to injuries and worked less efficiently than the males, even after accounting for differences in physical strength and years of experience. Being a man and knowing what we are like, there's no way I was prepared to believe we are just more capable. So, I asked Anna Hess, Liz Cutler, Julie Massaro, and Jenn Kelley to look into it for me. Two weeks later, they came to me with enough data to convince me it was all down to the uniform. Attractive as it is, all that bare midriff the women's uniform leaves exposed demands extra caution when dealing with hot, cold, sharp, and electrified components or any kind of caustic or poisonous chemical, and when someone gets careless or something just goes wrong, they get hurt.

Anna, knowing my next step would be to tell them to solve the problem, had even made some sketches of a proposed new uniform. I'd given them permission to work with the quartermaster to create prototypes for new standard, dress, and desert uniforms, but I had no idea they'd gotten this far.

"I know it's a little late in the evenin' to just be gettin' dressed," I tell T'Pol, handing over the prototype, "but I'd like to see you try this on…. Please?"

I don't know what freaks her out more: the fact that I am allowing her clothing, that I give her a choice in the matter, or that I ask her so nicely. It's just a standard uniform, knit cotton skivvies, a light woolen undershirt, and a sturdy blue coverall, minus the colored piping that indicates the wearer's division within the Fleet; but when she runs her fingers over the material like it's fine Triaxian silk, I think my heart breaks a little to realize how much she covets something so simple, which I’ve taken for granted ever since I joined Starfleet. Then my guts twist a little to realize that I'm the one who's deprived her for so long – she may be my slave, but there's no law that says I have to keep her naked.

"They're yours," I tell her softly, swallowing hard against the sick feeling. "Why don't you go ahead and try them on?"

When she turns those big, brown doe eyes up to me in surprise, I have to smile at her a little bit. Over most of the past year, in my very few minutes of leisure time, I've been working my way through this series of books from the _Defiant_ 's library about a kid named Harry Potter. It's absolute fantasy bullshit about wizards, witches, and magical creatures, but with what's been going on around here, I kind of needed the escape.

With her great big eyes – brown instead of green – and pointed ears, T'Pol reminds me a little of a character called Dobby. He was something called a 'house elf', born a slave to a family named Malfoy, which was headed by a horrible, evil wizard named Lucius. Then one day, Harry stuffed a book that belonged to Lucius inside a filthy sock, hoping, I guess, that old Lucius would mistake the sock for a sack. The ploy worked. Lucius threw the nasty old sock, Dobby caught it, and according to the rules of the story, getting clothes from his master made him a free elf.

Suddenly, I don't feel like smiling anymore. If she’s Dobby, that makes _me_ Lucius, and he’s probably the second most evil sonofabitch in the series. He's manipulative and conniving, stuck up and deceitful, with no concern for anybody but his son, Draco, whom he expects to follow in his footsteps.

There are times, every now and then, when reality walks up and smacks you in the face. It’s not often a nice sensation.

When T'Pol still hesitates, I tell her, "I'd really like to know how they fit."

She just keeps standing there, head bowed, chewing on her bottom lip, and I feel a flare of impatience at her stubbornness. After all this time, I'd have expected her to jump at the chance to cover herself. Just a moment earlier, she was obviously pleased with the gift. So, why is she refusing?

Still, that glimpse of self-revelation gives me pause. Instead of bawling her out, I deliberately control my temper and try to work out what the problem is, using the only reference I have. Dobby was delighted with a single, disgusting sock because it meant he was free, but most house elves enjoyed their lives of service. Most of them had better masters than that bastard Malfoy (or me), but even miserable old Kreacher, who was half crazy and hated just about everyone at one time or another, would have been devastated by the gift of his freedom. He wouldn't have known what to do.

Then it hits me. That is _exactly_ T'Pol's problem, not with freedom (granting her that would be an act of treason, both because the Empress has declared all aliens slaves, and because the Empress gifted this particular alien slave to me) but with the clothes themselves. Am I expecting some kind of show, like a reverse striptease, or am I all business, wanting her to serve as a dressmaker's dummy? I'm sure the truth of the situation would never enter her head, and that realization brings back the sick feeling in my guts.

"They're _yours_ ," I tell her again, emphasizing the possessive as I push the pile of fabric into her hands. "Go try 'em on."

I gently nudge her through the bathroom door, and when she leaves it slightly ajar because I have trained her never to shut me out, I close it quietly behind her.

While T'Pol is dressing, I turn on some music to mask the conversation we are about to have. Then, I pull up the personnel files on everyone who was involved with The Project in what used to be my Sickbay. I am familiar with some of them, and quickly eliminate a handful of names that can't or shouldn't be used as my scapegoat for the explosion. The remaining names I download to T'Pol's PADD. I'm going to give her the list and ask her to come up with a plausible story to explain what happened in a way that discourages further investigation. Most of the people whose names I have pulled out have families who will need their survivors' benefits, a couple whose duties simply would never have put them in a position to create such an explosion, and Liz, naturally. Most of those files can be revisited if we can't find a suitable candidate from the ones who are left, but I want T'Pol to start with the group I selected because they're past suffering and have no one the Empire can punish in their place. With her Vulcan logic, I'm hoping she can come up with an explanation that no one will question.

It's a shameful thing, what I'm asking her to do, laying the blame for all those deaths on some innocent victim, but then, I remind myself that no one stays innocent and survives in the Imperial Services for long. They're not responsible for the explosion that destroyed sickbay, but they've all done something horrible. Even Liz admitted to knowingly letting Martin Roberts go to his death because she liked the feeling of two men quarreling over her, and I'm still trying to wrap my head around _that_ one (though in fairness, once Major Malevolence had the guy in his sights he was already a dead man walking – all that had to be arranged was the exact date and time he hit the floor). I suppose she can be excused in light of the fact that she was mentally pretty fucked up from being Reed's favorite chew-toy at the time, but I can't help wondering how many others have suffered things just as bad. If she wasn't an alien, I suppose T'Pol could even be excused for snapping me to pieces like a dry stick and shooting the various parts out so many different airlocks if she ever took the notion someday. I reckon if we made an exception for everyone who'd suffered some horrible trauma or abuse in the Imperial Service, nobody would ever be held responsible for anything.

And I'm not so sure how that would be much different than what we have now.

So, if slandering one orderly who doesn't have anyone to care about his or her good name is all it takes to stop an investigation that could derail my barely formed plans, then T'Pol and I will both have to live with the shame of the fraud. I have enough on my conscience already that I'm sure I won't notice the extra weight, and she's under orders from me, so she can comfort herself with the argument that she had no choice.

She comes out of the bathroom with a shadow of fear in her face and an apology on her lips.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to close the door. I…"

"I did it," I tell her quickly. "It's all right."

At her startled look, I sigh and roll my eyes in resignation. This has been coming for a long time now; I've known it, and I'm pretty sure she's known it, too, but has been too afraid to hope. I just haven't wanted to say anything because the moment I say it aloud, it becomes a commitment – one I'm not sure I want hanging over my head.

"Things are…" I stop short, not sure what to say. "…Changin'," is the word I finally go for. "I'm sure you felt the explosion.” She nods, and I continue, my voice serious – heck, it doesn’t get much more serious than this. “General Gomez an' Alpha are dead. So is Phlox, along with a bunch of other people who were workin' in Sickbay at the time. I set the charge an' General Reed detonated it. The Triad is no more, an' things are gonna to start happenin' pretty damned fast. I plan to do what I can to control them.

"Officially, life might not change much for you. I don't know yet how set the Empress is on her slavery policy or how dependent the Empire is on alien slave labor, an' I'm not about do anything to hurt my people. Also, there are a lot of more urgent concerns that will need to be dealt with to keep the Empire from tearin' itself apart before we tackle the issue of how we're treatin' aliens livin' in it.

"But in these quarters, at least when we're alone…"

I come up short again. I don't want to say what's in my mind … in my heart. If I’m totally honest, I've _liked_ having her available to me the last few years. Hell, what man wouldn’t? But recently, it's even felt sometimes like it was maybe something a little more than just me using her for my own pleasure. When she started getting jealous of Liz, I kind of wondered if it was more than just self-preservation on her part, maybe even hoped that she might actually feel … something, too.

I don't want to risk having her refuse me, but…

I heave a sigh. "Just in here, when it's just the two of us … you belong to yourself."

She looks puzzled, and, bastard that I am, a part of me _wants_ her to be confused. I _want_ her not to understand. If she doesn't understand that she is allowed to say 'no,' she won't, and doesn't that just make me a damned hypocrite!

Oh, _hell!_ I know myself well enough to realize I won't rest until I say it plain.

"There will be things I expect you to do for me, things I will _need_ your help with, things I won't allow you to refuse; but the physical stuff, the intimacy … That's your choice, startin' now."

She gives a sharp gasp, and a powerful tremor moves through her; her face contorts for a moment and I swear her eyes are glassy with tears. For a Vulcan, it’s the equivalent of collapsing on the floor in a sobbing heap. Then she takes another deep breath, swallows hard, and regains her composure.

"I understand," she tells me. "Thank you. What do you need from me now?"

Oddly enough, I discover that that's exactly what I needed to hear from her. I wonder how she knew it when I didn't, and why, after everything I've done to her, she decided to give it to me.

Noticing the way the jumpsuit hangs on her, I can guess that Julie Massaro was the fitting model for the prototypes. That girl has got a figure that just won't quit, but she's several inches taller and much broader in the shoulders than T'Pol; so while the uniform fits in the bust and the hips, the sleeves and legs are too long, and the crotch hangs a bit low. As I roll up the cuffs of her sleeves and then lift her to sit on the desk so I can get at the legs of the suit, I quietly tell her how I rigged Sickbay to explode and what I have planned for the future. Then I hand her the PADD with the personnel files on it. I'll contact the quartermaster about adjusting the torso length of the uniform later.

"The last thing I need is a Bureau of Imperial Investigation Team out here lookin' for the cause of the explosion," I continue. "These are the files of the people who have no family who died when it happened. I’d like you to come up with a plausible explanation for how one of them could have been responsible. I’d prefer it to be an accident, human error. If you can't manage that, make one of them a saboteur. It can _not_ be a fault with the station itself. Since I'm in charge of this place, that would have way too many people lookin' at me way too closely for me to get anything done. Understand?"

She nods. "This would be easier if I had access to the blueprints of Sickbay and an equipment list, along with any duty rosters, work schedules, or specific assignments."

"Right," I agree, holding my hand out for the PADD. "I should have thought of that."

"I am sure you have a great deal on your mind," she says as I call up the necessary information and download it for her. "It's not surprising you might forget one or two small details."

I know already that it won't be long before I remove the password protection on the device, giving her access to a _lot_ more of the mainframe's data than the fraction of a fraction of a percent she has now. After all, I am asking her to become my partner in crime.

Cancel that: she now _is_ my partner in crime, right up till the moment she finds some way to report me to the authorities for multiple murders and High Treason against the Empire.

"That should be everything you need," I say, handing the PADD back. "I…uh…I think I need a shower."

She nods solemnly, and as I head into the bathroom, I see her out of the corner of my eye sitting cross-legged in the easy chair, studying the PADD. I might be a fool, but for some reason, I think she really is onboard with me already.

* * *

**Chapter Two**

**Rescue**

_Lieutenant (j.g.) Elizabeth Cutler_

_Damn_ that Trip Tucker! I honestly don't know whether I'm going to kiss him or kick him in the shins next time I see him. Maybe I'll just do both and cover all my bases.

Of course, I'm at least as mad at myself as I am at Trip.

I know him better than anybody on the station, better than anybody in the Imperial Fleet, maybe even better than anybody else in the Empire, considering how long it's been since he spent any real time with his family. I know how sneaky he can be, how deceitful and underhanded and manipulative, and how absolutely ruthless when necessary.

He _told_ me he had a plan. He even told me I wouldn't like it. Then he gave me this damned bracelet – this beautiful bracelet that I still treasure even knowing what it really is now – and told me to be ready to drop everything and go where he said and do what he said at a moment's notice.

And idiot that I am, I just _trusted_ him.

Now, I just want so badly to punch him in the nose that my hands hurt from balling them into tight fists.

And still, I feel like that's my own fault – the signs that he was about to do something crazy were all there, I just never questioned him.

Even when he came to visit me in my office when Malcolm went into labor…

_It’s started._

_It’s started and there’s nothing I can do to help him. I sit here behind the array of monitors that I’ve learned to regard with a personal and bottomless loathing, and all I can do is watch as the readouts tell the story of his body’s ordeal._

_They’re not even giving him any meaningful pain relief. Presumably this is because they don’t want any drugs to pass into the fetal bloodstream; for the last few weeks, he has received only nutritional supplementation and the hormones necessary to maintain the pregnancy to term. I don’t know what effect the cocktail he was fed in the earlier months may have had on it, but I’m as sure as I can be that it would have been trialed exhaustively to make sure it had no ill effect on the developing fetus._

_Why did they have to make him endure this, on top of everything else he’s suffered? Practically nothing about this pregnancy has been natural, why couldn’t they just take the baby out by Caesarian Section? It would be simple, and they could make it painless – just a few seconds to administer the epidural, and that would be it._

_But no. He has to suffer, he has to find all this additional strength when he’s already weak and exhausted._

**_Malcolm. Dear god, Malcolm, I can’t even hold your hand and tell you everything’s gonna be okay. I don’t know what they have planned for you, I don’t know if anyone will care if you don’t live through this._ **

**_Don’t die, please don’t die_ **

**_I can’t go on living if you die_ **

_Obviously the news has gotten around. The circle of those 'in the know' is very small, so it doesn't take long to spread the word. After a couple of hours the door opens and Trip walks in. He stands behind me and drops a hand onto my shoulder. “How’s he doin’?” he asks quietly._

_“His blood pressure’s a bit high. His blood sugar levels are dropping fast, though.” I try not to let my voice tremble. “They should give him something, some kind of energy drink, even if he can only sip it, or glucose in an IV. He needs to keep his strength up.”_

_“He’s not the only one, baby girl.” With his free hand he pulls up the cuff of my uniform. I sense rather than see his nod of approval when he sees the bracelet he gave me in place there. Even if he hadn’t drilled it into me that I should wear it at all times, still I’d be reluctant to take it off; it’s beautifully made, even the intertwined arms of the little engraved oak tree perfectly symmetrical. It symbolizes strength, and I need strength, not just for me but for Malcolm, who must be getting closer and closer to the end of his with every contraction that I see so mercilessly delineated on the readouts._

_“They’re gettin' real close together. Doesn’t that mean he’s nearly ready to…” His voice trails away. ‘Ready to give birth’ sounds so utterly ridiculous, but that’s what’s going to happen. The microphones pick up Malcolm’s gasping breaths, interspersed with the long, suffering groans of any mammal in the throes of a contraction. Part of me longs to switch it off so I don’t have to hear him in pain, all the rest of me treasures every second of it because I don’t know if he’s going to survive this and at least while he’s breathing and moaning he’s alive._

_“I think it’ll be very soon now.” The spikes of muscular activity are like the seismograph of a volcano, and now there are hardly any intervals between one tremor and the next._

_There is movement in the room that I can see through the window. Two people are being ushered in. Presumably they had better things to do than witness all the ugliness and pain of a long, agonizing labor; their arrival must definitely mean the birth is imminent._

_Trip evidently thinks so too. He squeezes my shoulders encouragingly. “We’ll be relyin’ on you, baby girl,” he whispers, and then he’s gone._

_I hardly notice him go. All my concentration is focused momentarily on the two bastards who are responsible for all this. How cool and aloof they look, in their matching light blue silk uniforms that are immaculately tailored and pressed. I don’t know how they can bear to breathe the stink of sweat and fear._

_Chairs are brought for them. Alpha sits decorously, wearing his look of amused interest. Em, on the other hand, seems drawn to the man she used to serve aboard_ Enterprise _. I bite my lip to hold in the screams of abuse as she walks forward and bends over him; how can she see him suffering like this, how can she bear to see it? Even now, **even now** , can’t she feel any pity for him?_

_I think at first she means to kiss him, but perhaps even for her that’s a step too far. Instead, she strokes her fingers lightly across his forehead, above the leather strap that holds him flat. Bitch! Then she whispers something, too softly for the microphones to pick up._

_He responds. It’s so long since I heard him speak a word. His voice is too soft and hoarse for me to understand most of it, but I catch the word ‘please’._

_She steps back, and considers for a moment. She trades a look with Alpha, who shrugs indifferently. Then she gives an order._

_I see the frisson of uncertainty go around the assembled lab techs. Phlox has his back to me, but I can tell even he hesitates._

_At this critical moment, hesitation is anathema. Alpha tenses in his chair, and if he rises to his feet everyone in the room except Em and possibly Malcolm will die._

_The clamps around the bed fly open. Finally, Malcolm is free! I catch my breath, pressing a hand to my mouth, while the tears spring to my eyes._

_But he’s too weak, of course. I watch him move, but it’s so sluggish and uncoordinated; there’s barely a shadow of his old grace in him. The microphones tell the story of the huge effort it costs him to somehow slowly struggle upright, clutching handholds on the rails at either side of the bio-bed. How desperately he must want to do this; even as he finally claws his way to sitting, facing the two people he loved, I hear this awful sound break from him. It must be the agony of the baby finally pushing its way into the world, but to my appalled ears it’s more than that: it’s a long, terrible wail of grief and accusation._

_I see Em look at him. I’m not sure what I see on her face; I can’t believe that in the face of a cry like that she could possibly be smiling…_

… And then there’s this utterly weird feeling, as the world dissolves around me, and rebuilds itself as what appears to be the interior of a shuttle, though no shuttle pod I've ever seen has had a transporter pad.

"Get off the pad, ma'am!" a young woman now barks from the pilot's seat, and I jump aside just in time to avoid the incoming beam.

Whoever is following me seems to be taking an unusually long time to reintegrate, and I ask, "What's wrong?"

"There's alien DNA in the matter stream," she tells me, without glancing aside; her fingers are working madly at the controls. "The pattern buffer is reading it as contamination rather than a discrete entity. I'm having a little trouble separating ... there!"

A naked man materializes on the pad before me, writhing as something red and squirming is expelled from the great wound at the base of his belly. I don’t even have time to squeal, I hardly have time to breathe. However this chance has been given to me, I have to take it.

The pilot, whoever she is, was clearly better prepared for this turn of events than I was. There are towels and medical equipment, an incubator and clean warm water waiting. I feel the shuttle go to warp as I kneel beside Malcolm to gently ease the baby out of his vagina, taking care not to drag on the umbilical cord. Even now I can see with astonished pity and revulsion that the tiny boy is severely deformed; he’s alive, but unlikely to be so for very long.

This would have been detected very early in the pregnancy if it had happened naturally. Right up till the last minute, every indication said it was a healthy boy. This must be something to do with the transporter.

"Damn," the pilot breathes as she comes to squat beside me. "I thought I had him…."

 **Probably best for everyone,** Trip’s voice murmurs in my ear, though he’s not here of course. Wherever ‘here’ is; I’m too stunned by developments to even think how all this could possibly have come about, let alone where we are.

"Shouldn't you be piloting the ship?" I ask as I lay the infant to one side, warm and safe on the blankets laid ready, while I examine Malcolm. I know that I need to leave the cord attached while the placental blood runs back into the baby. Nothing is inevitable yet.

"Autopilot will get us to Earth okay," she informs me. "I'm Corporal Amanda Cole. I was a MACO field medic before I was assigned to Commodore Tucker's command two years ago. Tell me what to do."

I nod, remembering her now. I've seen her around the station. Trip even asked me about her once, but all I could tell him at the time was that she seemed okay, if not particularly friendly. That was only a couple of months before … this started.

Malcolm is all but unconscious, and I run a needle into him and hook him up to the waiting saline drip while Corporal Cole gets him on a cannula and starts him on oxygen. Even more than rest, he needs fluids and glucose; proper nourishment with lipids and proteins can wait until this crisis is over. I wish I could sedate him, but I need more information about his physical state, and he has to expel the afterbirth before it will be safe to move him somewhere comfortable.

“Doctor Salazar is waiting at the facility on Earth, Ma’am,” the corporal tells me as she hands me the glucose injection she’s pulled out of one of the storage compartments on her side of the craft. “Commodore Tucker said he was sure you’d be able to stabilize the patient in the meantime.”

I’m flattered by Trip’s faith in me. I just wish I’d read a refresher on postpartum care; it hardly seemed worth it after I was banished to that blasted observation room, because it was all too easy to guess that nobody but the most trusted underlings would be allowed near the baby when it was born. I’m guessing that they’d have had a wet nurse standing by, because it was beyond imagination that Em would have consented to being tied down to the bother of feeding the child, whatever she felt for it.

As for who’d have been in charge of looking after Malcolm, well I guess we’ll never know. I suppose it depends what their plans for him were. Maybe they wanted ‘the heir and a spare’, so he’d have been coaxed back into good enough condition before being forced to undergo all that misery and pain all over again. Maybe they thought one was enough, maybe they didn’t even care what happened to him when the baby was safely born. I’ve never pretended to know what went on inside Alpha’s head, but there was a time when I’d thought better of Em Gomez.

His hair is plastered to his head with sweat, his face wet with it. His skin is almost ivory, but though his body is hot he starts to shiver. I have no idea whether this is simple emotional reaction to trauma or whether he’s going into shock; the hand-held medical scanner Corporal Cole passes me from the shuttle's first aid kit lacks the resolution to tell me whether he’s hemorrhaging inside or just experiencing the normal blood loss associated with giving birth, where the placenta has begun to detach from the uterine wall. Prolonged labor is a risk factor for post-partum hemorrhage, and based on some of the readouts I’ve pulled up, his lasted more than eighteen hours, though he managed to conceal it until his waters broke; the guys monitoring the readouts on the previous shifts must have been half asleep not to have noticed. I shake my head in amazement at his self-control not to cry out from the pain he must have been enduring. At least he seems to be slightly closer to consciousness now, but he’s unresponsive, simply lies there staring blankly into space as though reacting to anything is beyond his capability.

So far, there’s no sign of significant bleeding, though his blood pressure is a lot lower than I like. I raise his legs gently to keep the blood nearer his core, propping them on a case of emergency supplies, and wrap him in blankets as best I can. From what I can remember, the placenta should be expelled naturally quite soon after the birth, so I leave that to take place in its own time. The necessary items are ready for the cord to be cut, so taking my best guess at the proper place for this to happen, I clamp it off and cut it. 

"Do you have any formula?" I ask the corporal as I scan Malcolm again.

"Already mixed," she says, and pulls a bottle out of a warming unit usually used to heat ration packs.

I smile, pleased and grateful that she is so well prepared, and take the bottle from her.

I am afraid to hold the baby. For one thing, his entire brain is externalized, sitting at the back of the skull like an enormous blister with only the meninges protecting it. Moving him without proper support could stretch and tear delicate neurons, possibly even killing him. There's no telling what damage I may have already done just by finishing the delivery, but it couldn't be helped. Instead, I make a soft nest around him with some towels and another blanket, and then kneel beside him to feed him.

He takes the bottle well and sucks greedily on the silicone nipple I push between his lips, at least at first. But almost at once he chokes and sneezes, and the milky white formula comes flooding out his nose.

"I need suction!" I demand, holding my hand out as if I were a surgeon and Corporal Cole was my nurse. She slaps the requested device briskly into my palm, and I clean his nose and throat as he continues to make the most awful gagging, choking noises until finally, all the milk and mucous seem to be out of him and he is breathing easier. Then his face gets dark red and contorts into an angry little mask, and he opens his mouth in a silent wail of infantile frustration that gives me a clear view of the cleft palate which allowed the formula to flow up into his nasal sinuses and down into his lungs.

And that's when I realize that he hasn't made a sound yet.

I'm torn. All I want to do is take care of Malcolm, comfort him and reassure him, but the baby clearly requires intensive care now. Even if I can't save him, it's my duty to try. It's my duty to care.

"I need you to monitor the general," I tell Corporal Cole. "Vitals every five minutes."

I pull the blanket back from the baby to run a visual examination at the same time as I scan him. Cole looks up as she is taking Malcolm's pulse, and I hear her gasp.

Although clearly the most dangerous, the baby’s exposed brain is not his only visible physical deformity. The right side of his chest is concave, and the left seems to be missing some ribs. Every time he inhales, the lung inflating underneath the skin causes a grotesque bulge to form on his side as it squeezes out through a space between the third and seventh ribs. His right arm, which looked normal enough at first, has turned a nasty, bluish-black color in the time he's been here, and when I touch his palm, it seems icy cold. He also has a third lower limb, which I guess you could call a leg, though it is shaped more like the hind limb of a quadruped than the lower limb of a biped and splits into two appendages. One terminus is a disproportionately small, four-toed foot with a heavy, callous-like sole. The other comes to a point with a tuft of coarse white hair and twitches frantically when, managing to swallow my nausea and dismay, I coo at him and tell him what a brave boy he is. To my surprise, he may not understand the words, but he gets the tone, and I wonder, if he can hear me, how functional is his brain? If we can protect it, keep it warm and moist, prevent infection and avoid bumping, bruising, stretching or tearing it until we can construct a skull to house it, could he be normal?

Then I look at the results of the scan and I know the answer is no, never, not at all. However slim the chance, there is a possibility that we could keep his brain viable until we manufactured a way to protect it. The cleft palate is easy to fix, and the extra limb can be removed. These are not serious problems, but he has internal defects and deformities the likes of which I have never seen, never even heard of or imagined. If there was any doubt whether the transporter was responsible for his issues, it is gone now, for no fetus would have survived to full term with the internal problems this little one has.

He is silent because he has no vocal cords, but again this is something we can fix. He is missing his right lung, which explains the concave chest, and as I suspected, three ribs on the left side failed to materialize, which allows his left lung to bulge out with every breath he takes. Yet, even these are not fatal defects. A person can function perfectly well with only one lung, and artificial ribs can be manufactured out of all sorts of material, or part of one of his other bones could be shaped to fit and allowed to grow with him. But as I read further down the scan results, I realize there is no point in trying to fix these problems. This baby's life will be measured in hours. Days at the most.

The worst, the one lethal deformity, is in his belly. He has only one functioning kidney, but as with the lungs, one is enough. His stomach is a bit misshapen, but it seems to work well enough. The problem is what comes next.

He has no liver or pancreas, and no intestines. Everything beyond his stomach is just a mass of undifferentiated material. The scanner isn't even reading an appropriate number of cells. Mostly it's just a few subcellular components like mitochondria and lysosomes and random strands of DNA floating in a vast blob of protoplasm. There is a section of his right arm from mid-bicep to his elbow that is similar, with no muscles, tendons, ligaments, or bone, and in that part of him, even the blood vessels in his skin have failed to form, which explains why his hand is cold and discolored – it's dying from the lack of a blood supply which would deliver life-giving oxygen.

The intestines absorb most of the nutrients one gets from food, so without them, he'd likely be malnourished. It might be possible for him to survive on total parenteral nutrition – I.V. feeding – but even that isn’t without its complications, including infection, blood clots, and liver disease (if he had one), all of which could be fatal. Even with TPN, his stomach is still producing hydrochloric acid and mucous. With no outlet from his stomach, a fistula would have to be created and a tube inserted to drain the stomach contents, which again leads to the risk of infection.

His missing pancreas is not a significant problem. We can produce synthetic insulin and implant a pump with an external reservoir to inject it into the bloodstream whenever the blood glucose level gets too high. In fact, we're probably only about ten years away now from creating an implantable device that will run on the natural electric currents in the body and produce insulin as needed.

These are all very complicated, but still manageable conditions, and though managing them would be painful for the little guy, it would not be impossible.

The problem, the **fatal** problem, is his missing liver. The liver is the body's major detoxification system. It filters the body's entire blood supply every four to five minutes, taking in all kinds of cellular waste and foreign chemicals and breaking them down into less toxic substances that can be excreted by the kidneys and digestive tract (again, if he had one). It also produces bile, which is essential for fat digestion, and it plays crucial roles in blood clotting and metabolic regulation.

And we still cannot replicate most of the substances it produces.

A human being **cannot** survive without a liver, and whatever else he might be, he still is mostly human.

For any other child in the empire with parents of sufficient means, there would be at least a remote possibility of a life-saving transplant. In Imperial medical facilities, DNA is now scanned and registered at birth. Children born in private facilities must be registered before they can attend school. Since school attendance is mandatory everyone is registered, except those who are living underground and off the grid. Spread enough credits around, and a recently deceased match would be found – or produced through some manufactured accident – soon enough.

But this baby is unique, and not just by the method of his conception. Anyone with eyes to see can tell that there is something unusual about Alpha. The vision he gave me on the day of my promotion showed me how very terrifying he could be, and now I realize with dreadful certainty that even though I've never seen any proof of it, he's not entirely human anymore.

This baby is a hybrid. The only one. There is no genetic match for transplantation. Maybe Phlox could make something work, if he were here and had sufficient time to experiment, but this baby's problems are too many and too severe. He will die and it will happen soon. It will more than likely be painful. The only question is whether it will be of malnutrition, infection, brain injury, or a buildup of toxins in his blood.

I swaddle him snugly, taking care not to shift or jostle his brain, and look at Malcolm who, for the first time in ages, seems to be sleeping peacefully.

"How is the general?" I ask.

"Unconscious, but stable," Cole replies. "Pulse and respiration strong and steady, blood pressure rising. He's in no immediate danger."

"Good." I nod. "I need you to listen carefully."

I explain my findings to her, show her the scans. Tell her how we could conceivably manage everything but the missing liver.

"No we couldn't, Ma’am," she says shortly. "Lieutenant, we're not going to a hospital. Where we're going can barely be called a clinic. We don't have the equipment to properly monitor an infant this ill, let alone treat him; and the nutrients he'll need, lipids and amino acids that can safely be introduced directly into the bloodstream – it could be weeks before we get hold of anything like that."

"I see," I mutter, mostly to myself.

We sit quietly for a moment, looking at the babe. His little face gets red and silently he blows his stack again.

"Do you think he's in pain?" Amanda asks softly.

"Very likely," I tell her with a slight nod. "If not, he will be soon."

We lapse into another thoughtful silence. Malcolm shudders violently, but his vitals remain stable and he doesn’t wake, so Amanda and I just pull back the layers of blankets to put a freshly heated one next to his skin, and wrap the others around him again. I stroke his sweaty forehead once, just for the sheer joy of being able to touch him again after so long. Then we sit once more, her on one side of the craft and me on the other.

"If we can't help him, and he's going to die anyway, and he's going to be in pain until he does…" Amanda begins, her tone one of reluctance.

"What?" I ask when she trails off. I am sure she’s thinking what I’m thinking, and it’s a very complicated subject. This is a case where medical ethics conflict with Imperial practice and my personal views don't necessarily agree with either. Just thinking about it makes me feel as though I’m standing astride a chasm with my footholds crumbling beneath me.

"It just seems like the kindest thing we could do is…ease his passing?" Cole suggests.

"‘Ease it’?" I echo.

I've served on ships in the heat of battle when terminal patients, or even sometimes those who could be saved except for lack of space in sickbay, were carried to the airlock, still alive, occasionally conscious, and blown out into space. It's a brutal practice, but eminently practical, which, I suppose, Command has determined one must be in the heat of battle. Considering how Phlox has always hated me, I’m astonished that I’ve always escaped morgue detail. Maybe it was just because he had too much to think of till it was too late.

"Speed it," she amends.

"You mean…." I stop, quite deliberately. It's considered unethical for a medical professional to **offer** the final option, although once it is requested, we are permitted to carry it out.

"Euthanasia." Amanda supplies for me.

I look at the baby. With only his face showing, he looks flawless. Beautiful. I want with all my heart to save him, even knowing what he is and what it cost Malcolm to bring him into the world. Because he's an infant and he's innocent, and, away from Em and Alpha, he could even be **good**. I’ve never bought into the theory of nature being all and nurture being nothing; and you never know, raised in a decent environment, with the right values…

But there's no facility in the Empire that can compensate for a missing liver, and, even with Phlox available to help, there's no hope of finding a suitable donor in time. This baby is just too genetically complicated.

I don't know I'm weeping until I start to sniffle. There are no tissues available, but there’s a box of sterile gauze pads that we’ve been using. I pull one out and unwrap it, mop up my tears and blow my nose. I swallow hard a couple of times until I’m confident that I can control my voice. Then I look up at Corporal Cole.

"I don't know you very well," I tell her, "but I believe you to be an honest and honorable person. So I have to ask you, can you please look me in the eye and tell me that this **was** just an accident? Can you assure me that you weren’t ordered, advised, or suggested to make sure this happened and that the transporter hasn't been altered to manufacture a malfunction?"

I gesture toward the baby as I speak in case there is any doubt what I mean by 'this'. I can't believe Trip Tucker would order the execution of an infant, but this baby was meant to be so much more than just a child. Trip can be ruthless and pragmatic, and I have no doubt that he could, and would, order the elimination of a threat to humanity. I can't even blame him for it except that the threat is right here in front of me and it's just a little baby boy.

Then Amanda crosses the small space between us and crouches before me. Her face is serious, and so is her voice. "Ma'am, I ran a diagnostic as soon as Commodore Tucker notified me that my services were likely to be needed soon. My only orders were to lock onto two signals and transport them aboard, and then convey them to Earth. I didn't even know for certain that you were living beings until you materialized on the platform.

"What happened here is the unfortunate result of our equipment's limitations. The transporter initially identified the baby as a parasite to the general, then, when I convinced it that the 'parasite' was a separate being, it identified the alien DNA as a parasite to the baby. By the time I got the transporter to accept the baby as a separate entity from the general, they’d both been in the pattern buffer so long I had to bring them through or risk their patterns degrading and killing them both. I didn’t have time to isolate the alien DNA in order to bypass the decon protocol and let it through."

"So you're saying what? The transporter filtered the alien DNA out of every one of his cells?"

"More like it neutralized it," Cole says regretfully. "Like when you combine an acid and a base. All the chemical components are still there, but they get recombined into different, neutral compounds. It wasn't planned. It wasn't even suspected."

"Not even suspected?" I press her. "Forgive me for noticing that you seem awfully well prepared for an infant that you weren't even suspecting. It's one thing to have a few extra blankets in case of emergencies and a tube of glucose in your first aid kit, but a saline drip, infant formula, and a surgical suction kit are another matter entirely."

"Honestly, Ma'am, none of that is unusual cargo for this ship," she responds cautiously. "This is Commodore Tucker's private shuttle."

Her tone suggests more than her words can convey. I glance around and soon see exactly what she means. In a cooler in the corner I see at least ten cases labeled TDaP. That's almost 1500 doses of the tetanus, diphtheria, and pertussis combination vaccine. I can tell from the coding on the side that they're all due to expire in a few weeks, and I remember how, under Doctor Jeremy Lucas, the Jupiter Station CMO before Phlox took over in Sickbay, all of our old stock would periodically disappear from the pharmacy and Doctor Lucas would take a few days' leave soon after. There are shelves full of soon-to-be-expired antibiotics and analgesics and all manner of drugs as well as bandages, obsolete scanners and surgical equipment that is still serviceable but has seen better days. There's a pallet of boxes labeled boots, coats, socks, gloves, and hats – all outerwear – and another just of blankets, because, I'm sure, winter is always approaching somewhere on the planet. There are also two pallets of ration packs, all within days of their official expiry; the chemical packets used for heating them may have lost potency, but on a planet, like Earth, for example, a solar heater or electric hot plate or even a fire built by someone living off the Grid would do the trick.

"Almost all of this stuff was…reclaimed…from salvaged ships and old medical stores," I realize. "But the formula?"

"There are some things people need that the 'Fleet can't provide, Ma'am," Cole says. "Over the years, Commodore Tucker has found sources to barter with."

"Barter? He doesn't buy or sell any of it." It's not a question. I know Trip, and if I'm honest with myself, I've suspected something like this for years; or I would have if I'd thought about it, but in the Imperial Service, sometimes it's best not to think about things too much. Sometimes, the more you think about a thing, the more you understand it, and the more you understand it, the greater your responsibility to report it. Trip is sitting on top of what could be the biggest and most lucrative black market operation in the Empire, and he's using it to run a secret charity.

"No, ma'am," she responds with a shake of her head. "He just helps it get to the people who need it."

Sometimes, I really do love that man.

"And the baby was truly an accident?" I've been distracted by the scale of Trip's secret long enough that I need one more assurance about my immediate concern.

"Yes, Ma'am, it was just a malfunction due to the limitations of the equipment."

I believe her. She is earnest and sincere, and I am as sure as I can be that she is telling me the truth. It puts my mind at ease.

I take a deep breath.

"Very well, then. Before I do anything else, I have some questions I'm required to ask you." Jeremy Lucas, the Jupiter Station CMO who was ousted to make way for Phlox, taught me the right and necessary things to say. He was the only one who ever bothered to teach me anything about medical ethics, and I treasure that knowledge.

"In the absence and incapacity of this infant's parents, are you assuming the role of guardian and advocate?"

"Ma'am?" Alarm fights with puzzlement on her face.

"You have suggested euthanasia, Corporal Cole, the hastening of death to prevent suffering. My ethical training requires us to have a very specific conversation for that to happen. First I have to establish who speaks for the patient. So, in this situation only, are you assuming the role of guardian and advocate?"

And now it hits her what she has proposed and what I, on her behalf, am about to do. Her face flushes and then pales, and her eyes get glassy. She swallows hard and nods. "Yes, ma'am."

"And is it your request, in light of multiple critical, eventually fatal medical conditions, that action should be taken to hasten this patient's death to prevent his suffering?" It's the definition I learned from Doctor Lucas. The second part, 'to prevent suffering', is the only thing that makes this bearable.

"Yes," Amanda chokes, barely audible, but loud enough I can accept it. Any answer other than a clear and concise ‘yes’ is insufficient.

"Do you understand that the drugs used for the procedure are toxic and that because of this toxicity, once the procedure is begun, no action can be taken to resuscitate the patient, **even if you change your mind?"**

"Yes."

"And are you satisfied, as much as reasonably possible, that this decision is the best one for managing the patient's condition in the most humane way possible?"

"Yes, I am."

"Then your wishes will be carried out."

I know exactly what nutrients were in the IV they were running into Malcolm. Potassium, sodium, calcium … so many of the electrolytes our bodies depend on for healthy function are deadly in excess. I've worked in the medical field my entire adult life, and it still terrifies me to think how easily a misplaced decimal point can end a life with a lethal overdose. If anyone ever asks, I can explain that because of his larger size and slower metabolism, I had time to treat Malcolm. The baby, being so tiny and having the accelerated metabolic rate of a newborn, passed before I could even identify Phlox's miscalculation and locate the correct compounds to counteract the poisoning. I rummage around in the drawers and quickly find what I need. I separate the folds of the blanket to expose the umbilical cord and loosen the clamp I had placed there earlier. The blood at the clamp site has clotted so he doesn't even begin to bleed. The needles are large and I need a big vein to insert them, also, the umbilical vein has the advantage of not having any pain receptors. He won't even feel the little pinch that usually comes with an injection.

After I inject him, I sit on the floor and cradle his little face in one hand. Stroking my thumb over his soft little cheek I tell him again and again what a wonderful little boy he is, how handsome and brave. He nuzzles my palm and smiles for me while the little white tip at the end of his extra limb twitches like crazy. Then he sighs deeply once, twice, and breathes no more.

As sad as I am, I am also certain it was the right thing to do.

* * *

**Chapter Three**

**Resolutions**

_Commodore Charles Tucker III_

I come out of the bathroom to find T'Pol sitting in the middle of the floor meditating. I'm more than a little pissed off to find her already defying me, but I have enough presence of mind to realize that her world has just been turned upside down. She might not be completely clear on what I expect of her now; so instead of snapping at her that while I'm not going to use her for pleasure anymore, I still expect her to follow orders if she doesn't want to end up back in her cage, I take a gentler tack.

"When I gave you those files, I meant for you to get started right away," I say, trying not to growl.

Her eyes pop open and she looks up at me. "I understood that. I'm finished."

Damn, I'm glad I was able to hold onto my temper long enough to get an explanation.

"Already? What did you come up with?"

She rises with fluid grace and takes the PADD off the desk. Pulling up one of the last images of Sickbay, she angles herself so I can see over her shoulder, and says, "You will be pleased to know that you can safely lay the blame for the explosion at the feet of General Hayes himself."

"No kiddin'?" I can't help the grin that spreads across my face. I remember well the quality of her work when she was a member of the _Enterprise_ crew. I have no doubt she has come up with a watertight explanation.

"Technically, it was a request from Doctor Phlox, implemented by General Gomez under General Hayes's authority," she says, and even for a Vulcan, she sounds a little smug. I'd actually go so far as to say she's pleased with herself for finding a plausible story that implicates the three of them. I kind of wonder if – maybe hope that – she's happy to have pleased me.

"Go on," I encourage her.

As it turns out, it's a very simple thing. That slimy Denobulan bastard ordered some non-standard equipment for The Project. Included in his shopping list was a medical deep freezer for sample storage – apparently they had embryos on ice if natural conception didn't work, not that there was anything ‘natural’ about what they did to Malcolm.

My thoughts skitter away from General Disorder, and I focus on what T'Pol is telling me.

"As it is not Starfleet Issue, this particular unit is not designed to be integrated into either our power grid or our coolant circulation system," she says. "Due to the secretive and compartmentalized nature of The Project, General Gomez elected to have one of her own people install the unit rather than enlisting a trained engineer. As far as I can tell, the lieutenant assigned to the task did excellent work."

She stops then. I wait a moment for her to continue, and when she doesn't, I can't help but smile a little to realize she's _playing_ with me. She's not just reporting what she's found to get it over with as soon as possible. She wants us to _talk._

So, I oblige.

"I don't see how some lieutenant's _excellent work_ gets us to a reasonable explanation for the explosion."

She pulls up the brochure on the cooling unit and highlights one of the lines in the product specs.

"I'll be damned! The coolant circulation system wasn't rated for the pressure we use here on the station," I observe. I already know where this is going, but give her the satisfaction of finishing her explanation.

"It was designed for use in a planetary medical facility," she says, turning to face me, and holding the PADD down at her side. "A much smaller structure not exposed to the extremes of open space, and therefore not constructed to meet the stringent requirements of systems integrated into an orbital space station. It was only a matter of time before it started leaking."

"And once it did, any little spark would blow out the entire Sickbay," I conclude, half wondering and half furious because it really _had_ posed a serious risk, in and of itself; and I never knew that much about Alpha, but back when she was on _Enterprise,_ then-Lieutenant Em Gomez would have known better. "All because those sneaky bastards didn't want to risk one of my people knowin' what they had in the freezer!"

"Indeed," she agrees.

"Thank you for this, T'Pol," I say as sincerely as I can manage. "I'll sleep a lot better tonight, knowin' I have a solid answer for the Empress when she asks me what happened, an' in the future knowin' I could lay it all on the people who were _really_ responsible instead of some poor bastard who was ordered to participate in their scheme."

She inclines her head, and again, I get the impression that she's pleased that I'm happy with her work. I move around her, considering our sleeping arrangements. I suppose as a gentleman, I should take the sofa, but she's so small, she could sleep there perfectly comfortably. If tomorrow was going to be an ordinary day, I wouldn't worry about it, but with the shit-storm I'll be facing, I absolutely _have_ to be in top form. My resolve wavers.

How rude of me would it be to ask her to take the sofa?

"I did discover something else you can probably use," T'Pol adds, a little tentatively.

I should be getting to bed, but best I know now.

"What's that?" I ask, giving her permission to proceed.

"As you may be aware, the Sickbay computers updated to the mainframe on the _Sirius_ ," she says. I nod, and she continues. "They only updated once daily, between 01:00 and 03:00."

I glance at the chronometer on the wall.

"So, nothin' that happened today has been stored on anything that isn't destroyed?"

"That is correct," she confirms. "The missing data leaves you free to offer any explanation you like for General Reed's survival."

I frown; she's too damned perceptive.

"I didn't tell you he survived," I say.

"No, but knowing your history with him, had he died, I would have expected you to mention it in the same breath with Generals Hayes and Gomez." Her gaze is clear, and fact is, she’s right – I would have done.

I nod, hoping I haven't given myself away to anyone else. The fact is, I don't _know_ that Reed survived yet, but, against my better judgment, I'm hoping.

T'Pol lowers her eyes and adds, "Perhaps in your official report you can say that Lieutenant Cutler was moving him to another part of Sickbay for a therapeutic treatment. The bulkheads between Sickbay and the surrounding corridors are considerably stronger than those between the classified suite and the rest of Sickbay itself, and since the only exit from the classified suite is out into the corridor..."

"They'd have to leave the research suite to get to any other part of the facility," I realize. "That's an excellent idea, thank you, but to tell you the truth, I hadn't intended to tell the Empress he was a prisoner here, let alone the subject of the experiment."

"Then you will need to purge the data from the _Sirius's_ computer core," she observes. "Perhaps you should order an inspection of all ships that were coupled to the station at the time of the explosion to make sure none of them were mechanically damaged by the jarring impact or electronically affected by any feedback when the Sickbay electronics went out. Since the _Sirius_ was docked at the port closest to Sickbay, it would be the ship most likely to be affected. Then perhaps you could tell the Empress that General Reed and Lieutenant Cutler were simply ‘renewing old acquaintances’ when the explosion happened."

"Now _that_ will work with what I had in mind," I say, not trying real hard to hide my amusement at her careful but subtly ironic euphemism. "I appreciate the suggestion."

This time she doesn't seem nearly so pleased to have found me a resolution to my problems. I have a sneaking suspicion that I know why, and in a moment of wild abandon, probably caused by the relief of having all my answers for the Empress packaged so neatly for me, I decide to address it.

"You know, Liz an' I are _just_ friends."

She looks up sharply, and hell! Her blood might be green, but she sure is pretty when she blushes.

"Your _relationship_ with Lieutenant Cutler is hardly any of _my_ business," she says, maybe a just a little bit too adamantly. "But I understand Humans sometimes have what you call ‘ _friends with benefits’._ "

I can't completely suppress my smile, but I'm smart enough not to tease her about being jealous.

"Well, I guess you could call it that, but the benefit in this case is _information_ ," I explain. "Liz was my informant on everything that happened in Sickbay, an' elsewhere. Sometimes, when a person feels they can't be seen comin' to me, they'll talk to Liz an' she'll let me know I need to arrange an 'accidental' meetin'. The sex is just the only way we can get together an' whisper without drawin' attention since she isn't actually under my direct command.

"Now, I'm not denyin' I enjoy it – I wouldn't be Human if I didn't – but it's somethin' I do out of necessity when circumstances require it, not out of desire whenever it strikes my fancy. If she wasn't spyin' for me, I'd say I think of her more like a kid sister than a romantic partner.

"An' in case you're wonderin', _she_ only has eyes for Reed." I’m no nearer than I ever was to understanding why, and if I don’t understand I’m sure T’Pol won’t, but that’s not important right now.

T'Pol looks up at me now, and being Vulcan, she definitely _does not_ smile, but all of the tension in her forehead, around her eyes, and in her jaw has relaxed. I know I have told her exactly what she wanted to hear, but I don't allow myself to speculate on _why_ that might be so.

We look at each other for a moment, neither of us knowing what needs to be said next, and we are saved by my one active alert going off. I accept the call on one of my secret channels. It's Amanda Cole.

"Package One was received in excellent condition," Cole tells me, which I can see for myself as Liz is visible on the bench in the background, entering something on a PADD – at a guess, recording Reed’s stats for Miguel’s reference.

"Package Two suffered a bit in transport, but with a little work it should be functional again." The blanket-wrapped figure on the transporter pad must be Reed.

"Due to a transporter malfunction, Package Three arrived damaged beyond repair." I don't see the baby anywhere, and from Cole's pained expression, I can only conclude that it was stillborn or died soon after. Bastard that I am, I feel only relief that it's one less problem I'll have to resolve.

"Final delivery is expected to take place on schedule," she continues in a businesslike tone.

"Acknowledged. You know what has to happen before you arrive."

"Yes, sir."

"Then see that it gets done."

"Yes, sir. Cole out."

The screen goes dark. I turn off the monitor and turn to T'Pol.

"I might be nuts, but I think General Reed can be helpful with implementin' some of the changes I wanna see happen," I tell her, steadfastly ignoring the expression that suggests she thinks ‘nuts’ isn’t even close. "I can explain more about that later, but right now, I really think the most important thing…"

" _Right now_ , you need to sleep," she interrupts firmly, telling me exactly what I was about to say to her. "You will have to explain everything to the Empress tomorrow. You will need a clear head."

I nod my agreement. "We'll deal with our sleepin' arrangements in a day or two. If you want, I can take the sofa until…"

"You should take the bed," she insists.

I suppose I'm being stupid, but damn it, I made a resolution to act like a gentleman around her and treat her like a lady. That doesn't allow for me to kick her out of bed just because I have a big day tomorrow.

"I told you, things are changin'. I'm not gonna take the bed an' make you…"

"We can share the bed," she interrupts me again. She's getting pretty damned bold already, cutting me off like that three times in a row, but somehow, I don't mind.

Still…

"I told you, you don't have to be intimate with me anymore," I say reluctantly. "I'm not gonna force you."

_Well sonofabitch, she's blushing again._

"I have grown…accustomed…to your presence," she admits a bit awkwardly. "For one thing, the temperature in these quarters is cool for a Vulcan and your body heat helps me to stay warm. I think we would both sleep better, together."

I don't think she has any idea how happy her declaration makes me. Part of me wants to tease her a little about not being able to hide her feelings as well as she might think, but my brain at least realizes that her Vulcan dignity wouldn't very much appreciate that.

So I just nod and tell her, "I agree."

She does a few neuro-pressure postures on me, and by the time I lie down, she has to pull the covers up over both of us because I’m too relaxed to move. When she snuggles up against me, her head on my shoulder and her arm across my chest, I can't help thinking that, while this is nothing I ever would have expected, it feels like it is exactly how things were always supposed to be.

* * *

**Chapter Four**

**Ultimatum**

_Lieutenant (j.g) Elizabeth Cutler_

It doesn’t take us so long to reach Earth, even with the shuttle’s comparatively slow speed. But we’re hardly past the first of the security zones before Corporal Cole turns from the helm.

I’ve been sitting with Malcolm, keeping an eye on him; his blood pressure has stabilized enough for me to feel it’s appropriate to move him into the recovery position, which is safest for an unconscious person, and also allows me to keep track of his vital signs at the appropriate intervals. Now it’s no longer possible to hurt the baby in any way, I cuddle him in one arm while I hold his father’s lax right hand with the other … okay, so Malcolm’s not the biological father, but I’m not sure what other word to use. ‘Incubator’, I suppose, but can you really reduce human relationships to such terms?

I guess that Cole was a bit weighed down by the responsibility she’d assumed – her part of it, anyway; it was I who’d operated the syringe. She hadn’t said much afterwards, but returned to monitor the helm in silence.

Now, however, my stomach clenches as I see her glance at me and then reach for a PADD lying among the medical paraphernalia. I don’t know why, but instinct suddenly shrills a warning that this is trouble.

“I’ve had orders from the commodore, Ma’am,” she says, her voice like duranium. “You’re to read this and obey the instructions on it.”

I take it from her shakily and activate the screen. A few stark lines of text appear.

_Corporal Cole will provide you with a device designed to be a safeguard. This device is to be implanted into the general before he reaches Earth’s atmosphere._

_This order and her instructions are to be obeyed without question._

_If you fail to implant the device, for any reason **whatsoever** , _the text concludes, _Corporal Cole has orders to execute the general and transport his body into space on the widest dispersal pattern possible. The official explanation for his demise will be that he was vaporized in an explosion in Sickbay, just as Generals Hayes and Gomez have been._

 _–What?_ I literally gape at her. I can’t get my brain around this, but then just for the moment it doesn’t matter – I have far more urgent matters to attend to right now.

“I believe you’re fully qualified to perform the operation, Ma’am.” Her tone is pitiless as she hands me a small medical case. I doubt this is business as usual, even for her, but clearly her MACO training allows her to follow even the most outrageous orders without question. “The commodore suggests that the dorsal side of the general’s sternum left of the midline, at the third intercostal space, would be the ideal location.”

I wonder who suggested _that_ to Trip. He's an intelligent man and his work requires a great deal of precision, so I’m not surprise by the specificity of the suggested site for this device; but _dorsal_ and _intercostal_ are medical terms that are not a natural part of his vocabulary and _sternum_ would as likely be _breastbone_.

Slowly I settle the baby in the incubator, still bundled in his shawl. Then I open the case.

I don’t recognize the device nestled inside, with the surgical instruments necessary for its insertion. It’s not large, less than half the diameter of my littlest fingernail, but I can tell it’s a miracle of miniaturization. And I know exactly who both designed and built it.

“What’s it for?” I ask, though I’m pretty sure I already know.

“The commodore just said ‘Call it insurance’.”

‘Insurance’. Against all that Malcolm has been and can be, against the deadly threat he will pose if he gets his strength back.

I don’t know precisely what this will do, but I’ve a good idea, particularly given the location that has been specified. And I am to do this to the man I love, to effectively hamstring him – to make him a prisoner all over again, in the very hour he was rescued.

Anger and confusion war with trust within me. Trip Tucker is my friend. He is a _good man_. He doesn't hurt people unnecessarily, and he doesn't kill if it can be helped.

He has saved the man I love, though I don't really know why. He cares for me, yes, I truly believe he does, but not enough to do anything as insanely dangerous as snatching Malcolm right out from under Em and Alpha's noses at the moment all their plans come to fruition – not just for my sake, anyway. Which can only mean he has another purpose, another _use_ for Malcolm.

Well, at the very least, I owe Trip the benefit of the doubt. He warned me that I might not like his plan for rescuing Malcolm, and he is, hands down, the bravest and most decent man I’ve ever known in the Imperial Fleet, his treatment of T'Pol notwithstanding. I'll ask him to explain, I'll give him that chance.

Setting aside what I’ve had to do with him and to him for the benefit of the surveillance cameras, I love Trip like a brother. I _want_ to be on his side, but if it turns out he plans to hurt and _use_ Malcolm, well, I don't have the qualms about killing that Trip Tucker does.

But right now Corporal Cole has a phase pistol nestled against her thigh, and if that’s not enough there’s a pulse rifle within reach – she could snatch it up easily in the time it would take me to dive into the attack, though knowing Trip and the caliber of people he tends to recruit, I would have no chance in a fight against her anyway. If he's brought this MACO into his confidence, she's not going to be just your average MACO; she'll be smarter and tougher and more loyal than most. And I have no doubt at all that she means every word she says, and that she will kill Malcolm without a moment’s hesitation if this safeguard isn’t in place before we reach Earth.

“He’s not stable enough yet,” I protest, trying to keep my voice from shaking. “For God’s sake, I could kill him inserting this!”

Her brown eyes are utterly implacable. “If you don’t do it, Ma’am, I _will_ kill him. Those are my orders.”

I want not to believe her, but God help me, I do. And worse still, I understand why she would.

Malcolm is on his side, in the recovery position, wrapped in blankets. I maneuver him gently onto his back.

He seems to have lapsed into unconsciousness, comatose or deeply asleep, though his vital signs are still stable, but as a precaution I administer a mild sedative and then a local anesthetic. I don’t want him to feel the pain of what I’m going to do.

He’s so debilitated that his ribs are clearly visible. I can see the xiphisternum, providing easy guidance of where the ribs meet the breastbone.

Cole tells me that everything in the case is sterile, so I take out wipes and clean my hands thoroughly and then clean the insertion site. I don’t have the facilities here to scrub up properly, but I do my best, and then don a pair of sterile gloves before I touch anything in the case.

She holds the scanner, so that I’ll be able to see exactly where the internal organs are sited. I take the scalpel from its protective sleeve and put it ready, but first I have to get the device ready for insertion. There’s a specially designed syringe with a clear, curved nozzle, and inside this is the flexible cable with a claw at the end of it, with the device securely held ready for deployment. At the base, control loops clearly meant to fit around the fingers presumably manipulate the cable and claw.

“The surgical adhesive is in that tube.” A nod towards the only other item in the case. “In addition to the adhesive, it contains a component that chemically bonds to certain animal cellular proteins, so you can get the device ready in the neck of the syringe and apply the glue just before insertion. It sets in less than ten seconds once it comes into contact with the appropriate biological material, so it should be a fairly simple procedure.”

“As long as I don’t make a mess of things and deploy it before I have it in position,” I say bleakly.

“Best if you don’t.”

I pick up the syringe and play around with it for a little while, getting the hang of the way the controls work. Finally – I’d prefer to have more time, but Earth is coming closer and I don’t think Cole will give me any leeway – I push the device into position, set it down in its housing and don a new pair of sterile gloves, just in case.

Drawing a deep breath, and glancing into the scanner, I set the scalpel to Malcolm’s flesh and push gently. Blood runs, and with her free hand, using sterile pads, Cole wipes it away. 

The aperture is wide enough to admit the neck of the syringe. I pick it up and squeeze the glue against the surface of the device.

The pointed nozzle will do the pushing, now the skin is open. Watching the scanner, I guide it into the incision and using as little pressure as I can, force it inward till it’s past the sternum. It goes without saying that I have to be desperately careful; though his breathing is slow and shallow, I could damage his left lung or even his heart if I slip just a little.

As soon as it’s in position, I engage the cable controls. Through the scanner I see the claw push the device out, and obediently turn in response to the pressure of my fingers.

… _There!_

It’s up against the back of the sternum, almost exactly halfway down, directly over the base of Malcolm's heart. With more practice and decent surgical instruments I could possibly situate it a bit better, but it’s in place, and I’m not going to take any chances. I hold it there for a count of twelve – Cole said it only needs ten seconds, but I imagine my anxiety might make me count a little too quickly – and then with agonizing slowness press the control that opens the claw. As soon as it's clear I retract it and pull it immediately into the nozzle, to make sure it can’t possibly do any damage as it’s withdrawn.

The nozzle slides back, and the device stays in place. Carefully I withdraw the nozzle, wipe the site with antiseptic and seal the incision with a few drops of the same surgical adhesive. The wound is small enough it won't even require a dressing, and the scanner assures me that any damage to his chest musculature is only superficial. He’ll be a bit sore for a couple of days, but no more, and by comparison with the other problems he’s going to have to deal with when he comes round, this is going to be well down the list of complaints. In fact, it will likely heal before he even notices it.

“Great job,” says Cole, sitting back on her haunches with a sigh of relief. “Worked like a charm.”

“I’m sure,” I reply a bit sourly. I’m still not sure what this damned thing does, and I’ve been coerced into inflicting more pain and misery on the man I love; I’m hoping she’s not expecting me to be delighted.

It’s just in time, because almost in that minute the warning comes that we’re passing into the outer security zone. We pass close to one of the orbiting stations, so close that I can hardly believe they don’t see us and hail us to know what our business is; since the Xindi, these stations have been like a ring of sleepless eyes. Amanda and I watch it pass, and then I busy myself making Malcolm comfortable again, back in the recovery position in case he might swallow his tongue now he’s unconscious.

“We’d better decide what we’re going to do as regards the euthanasia we carried out,” she says presently, as we adjust our approach vector to enter the atmosphere. “Doctor Salazar’s not going to be happy if he finds out about that.”

“We did the right thing.” I answer quietly and firmly. “It wasn’t just necessary, it was the most ethical as well as the kindest thing to do for him. I have no regrets – I’d do it again, if I had to, given the same circumstances.”

She looks up. “I’m sure of that, Ma’am. But the fact remains we have to protect ourselves from a legal standpoint.”

I’m not quite the innocent she seems to think me. I explain a bit tersely that I selected the electrolytes to make it look like Phlox had screwed up, and injected them through the umbilical cord so there wouldn't a visible needle puncture, if anyone were to ask awkward questions. “I’ll tell Trip the truth, of course,” I add. “But as for anyone else, I think we should keep it on a ‘need to know’ basis.”

“Good call.” She changes course slightly to run close to a shower of meteorites – they’ll help to provide camouflage when the shuttle’s nose heats up on entry.

There are no issues. Within moments the view changes from inky blackness filled with stars to the darkening blue of atmosphere, and there’s slight turbulence as we descend. 

There are the lights of a city up ahead as we drop through the cloud layer, but evidently that’s not where we’re headed. Another course correction brings us around and we head out into empty country, finally descending into what looks like a straggle of houses along one of the major routes out of the city I saw. I don’t know where we are, and Amanda doesn’t say.

Towards one end of the – well, I suppose it’s some remote village or other – is a big old building that looks as if it’s got a huge greenhouse tacked onto one side of it. The way the shuttle’s nose dips I think at first we’re going to crash into the base of this, but just as I grip the sides of my seat and brace for impact, what looks like a solid piece of ground opens up in front of the shuttle’s nose and we slot in as neatly as a coin into a moneybox.

I’d make some comment on fancy flying, but right now my tongue is stuck to the roof of my mouth with fright. I’m so astounded I almost can’t take in the fact that the shuttle is coming neatly to a stop in a now brightly-lit underground hangar, and that there are people waiting for us there.

The craft has hardly settled to the floor before the hatch is being opened and a middle-aged guy in a pristine medical coat is stepping in through the door. He's just shy of freakishly tall and long-limbed, with a head full of glossy black curls that would simply be unruly if they were an inch longer. The lines on his clean-shaven face suggest that he smiles a lot, and his slightly swarthy complexion indicates that he sees more sun than a typical Fleet doctor. A couple of others who are presumably members of his staff push a gurney in after him, and others are carrying medical instruments.

It’s self-evident who the patients are. The doctor – Salazar, at a guess – bends over the incubator and quickly inspects the baby inside it before setting the body gently down again.

“Lieutenant Cutler,” he says to me as he squats beside Malcolm. His voice is so deep that I feel it as much as I hear it, and I'm sure if he wasn't deliberately speaking softly, it would be booming painfully off the walls of the shuttle. “Ah’d appreciate it if you could bring me up to date on how the patient has reacted during the trip here.”

We’ve kept notes on the vital signs, as we should, and I pass them to him. He reads them quickly, nodding, and then gestures to his helpers to lift Malcolm onto the gurney. The drips we’ve put in place will go with him, wherever he’s going.

“Ah’ll guess you’ll want to come along with us too,” he adds, kindly, and though I don't really want to like him just yet, I'm already starting to. He seems to be everything a good doctor _should_ be – the sort of medic Doctor Lucas would have been if he'd had the luxury of working in the civilian sector where he could have treated his patients like people, instead of cogs in the war machine: just so many spare parts, easily discarded and replaced when worn or damaged. “Ah understand you were closely involved with his treatment for some time. Anythin’ you can tell us about what’s happened to him will be most useful.

“An’ of course we need to talk about the child. Ah wasn’t expectin’ to see anythin’ close to that level of deformity. Best Ah was aware, he should have been perfectly healthy.”

“It was a transporter malfunction, sir,” Amanda confesses. “It appears he has partly alien DNA, and the transporter identified him as foreign material. I couldn’t get the matter stream corrected in time. He was alive when he materialized, but died shortly afterwards.”

“You’ll see for yourself, doctor, when you examine him fully. Most of his problems could have been addressed if we'd had the staff, the time, and the proper facilities, but the one thing that we couldn’t have cured was that he had no liver – and given his alien DNA, there would have been simply no chance of a donor.” I meet his bright-eyed stare steadily. “I would have saved him if it had been humanly possible.”

For a little longer the penetrating stare endures, and then quite suddenly it dissolves into a smile that is one of real charm, and my anxiety dissolves just as quickly.

“Ah believe you would, Lieutenant,” he says, clapping me lightly on the shoulder. “But as it was a hopeless situation, Ah guess it's a mercy he passed so quickly. Now let’s get on and see what we can do for the general here.”

I don’t want to leave the baby alone, just shoved to one side like a piece of rubbish. But Amanda shows surprising tact, stepping over and lifting him out of the incubator as gently as though he was still alive. “I’ll take him to the morgue,” she tells me. “None of this was his fault.”

I’m so tired and shaky with relief that I feel tears pricking at my eyes. As she passes me, I stroke the baby’s cheek lightly with one finger. “I’m sorry, sweetie.”

“Ah know it’s hard when a littl’un doesn’t make it,” Salazar commiserates as we step down from the shuttle. “But Ah reckon we’re gonna have our hands full with the general for quite a while, so just you concentrate on that. From what Trip’s told me, he’s not gonna make it easy for any of us, ‘least to start with.”

“Probably not.” I brush away a stray tear and straighten myself defiantly. “But it will work. I’ll _make_ it work – whatever it takes.”

We walk into an access way, which leads further into subterranean corridors. One of the rooms opens to a treatment room, which while not having the sort of technology available in a standard Imperial hospital is not to be sneezed at all the same – and given that I’m quite sure that the existence of this place is completely unknown to the authorities, that in itself is no mean feat.

They pull the gurney to a halt under the scanner and Salazar cleans his hands and arms and pulls on surgical gloves. “Now, let’s have a look at what we’re dealin’ with here.”

Gently I pull back the blankets, revealing the pale, unconscious wreckage of the man I love. It’s the first time I’ve actually been able to look at him fully, and once again I have to fight back the tears. He would so much rather have died than been reduced to this.

But Fate – in the person of Commodore Trip Tucker – intervened, and now all of us have to deal with the situation that has resulted.

And Commodore Trip Tucker will have to deal with _me_ , if his plans include coercing Malcolm to do anything else against his will.

What will Malcolm think when he regains consciousness?

The truth is that I hardly dare imagine.

* * *

**Chapter Five**

**Changing Times**

**** _T’Pol_

‘Things are ... changin’.’

Those are the words the commodore has used, and it has to be admitted that I still find them virtually impossible to believe.

Now, however, events have borne out his words. He lies deeply asleep beside me, exhausted by the pressures of what must have been a most taxing day, but I feel little inclination for sleep. Instead I stare out at the unchanging stars through the viewport, and contemplate the events that have brought us to where we stand today.

The official declaration of all Vulcans as slaves merely set the seal on what had effectively been our status for years. I had earned slavery through my treason to Captain Archer, but many of my people endured conditions that might as well have been called slavery, for that was what they effectively were.

I knew, of course, that my actions against Archer were deeply dangerous, and that there would be grave consequences for myself and others if they were unsuccessful. Many of my fellow-plotters did not live to see the rebellion fail, and there were many times in the subsequent months when I wished I had died along with them.

Given that Tucker’s service to the Empress in the matter of the _Defiant_ set him high in her favor, it was always a possibility that he would be allowed to name his reward. And given that possibility, and the extremely specific reasons he had to bear a grudge against me – not to mention the fact that I had also earned her enmity, and could expect no pity because of it – I greatly feared that the reward he chose would be me.

And so it proved.

For the first few weeks, his treatment of me was inhumane even by the Empire’s standards. If he had owned a dog he would have scrupled to keep it caged as I was kept, but then I grew to dread being taken out, for those were the occasions when I was obliged to clean myself in order to render him whatever sexual services he required.

At any given moment I could have killed him without effort, but I knew what the reward of that would be. He was still high in the Empress’s favor, and it was beyond imagination that his killer would be offered a clean, quick death. By comparison with Humans, Vulcans in general have quite a high pain threshold, but I had not been spared sight of that barbarous exhibition of an ancient Earth punishment named ‘Lingchi’. Empress Sato might well decide that nothing less would suffice as punishment, and for sure General Reed would not refuse to carry out such an order. I had no wish to discover just how many cuts I could endure until the threshold was passed, and I became an example of what happens when a slave dares to raise a hand against her master.

Given the frequency and selfishness with which my new master used me, it would have been easy to deduce that he was an uncaring brute. On many occasions I retreated mentally within my shields, lying passive while he did what he would with my body. I was not obliged to speak, and though it soon became clear that inert acceptance was not sufficient, I was already well schooled in acting out the responses Human males require. So this was what I did, for endurance meant survival and survival meant hope, however tenuous this hope became as the months went by and despair became harder and harder to resist.

But aboard _Enterprise_ I had seen moments –glimpses only – that suggested that he was not, at heart, the uncaring brute that his behavior now suggested. The loss of his sister, the suicide of Martin Roberts, even his bristly concern for my own well-being when he barked at crewman Biggs to bring me a radiation meter when we were integrating the cloaking device into _Enterprise_ 's power grid – these moments might, indeed, be ‘the difference that makes no difference’, but they were all I had to hold on to, and I am not ashamed to admit that adrift as I was on the ocean that could so easily swallow me at a moment’s notice, they were the straws I clutched whenever he seemed satisfied with our coupling. If I could make myself indispensable to him sexually, it increased my chances of survival. It also increased the likelihood that he might eventually begin to think of me as more than an assembly of sexual organs – that he would remember I had other abilities that he might be able to turn to account. This, for a slave, is what ‘hope’ looks like.

I am not sure of the precise reason why the tide began to turn when it did. I was quite aware that his tension levels had increased, for he often accepted my services as a masseuse as well as a satisfier of his sexual needs. I was also aware that there seemed to be some kind of ‘understanding’ between my master and then-Ensign Cutler, and regarded her with deep suspicion; Human females are intolerant of their mates’ sexual interest in other females, and though there had been times when as part of his relaxation he had introduced other, paid females into our bed, I was easily able to assess these as being of no value other than entertainment. Human males appear to find watching sexual interaction between females particularly stimulating, and as a slave I had no say in the matter.

Cutler, however, was of a different caliber. 

Aboard _Enterprise_ she had been an object of widespread contempt, in thrall to Major Reed – who, it must be said, treated her with the same contempt even while using her sexually. My slavery was marginally better than hers, for at least my master did not hit me as a matter of routine. However, aboard Jupiter Station and freed from the malignant presence of the major, she slowly recovered and, indeed, began hesitantly to blossom.

I attributed much of this recovery to the benevolent spirit of Doctor Lucas, whose fatherly compassion extended to everyone on the station, of whatever status – he even exerted his authority as the station’s CMO to keep a track of my physical condition, saying he was responsible for the welfare of _all_ personnel under then-Commander Tucker's command.

Even so, the fact that the commodore allowed it, rather than arguing that I was not a person, but property, and therefore could not be _person_ nel, surprised me, but it became yet another straw to cling to when despair threatened to drown me.

Lucas’s kindly tutelage acted on then-Ensign Cutler like water to a plant reared in the desert. She was by no means unintelligent, but unsurprisingly lacked self-confidence – a lack which the doctor set about amending. Had he had longer than a year to work with her he might have done even more, but unfortunately the Triad made the decision that _Enterprise_ ’s ex-Chief Medical Officer was more apt to their purposes – the details of which did not appear for some time, during which research was presumably carried out until the time came for their plans to be put into action.

When Doctor Lucas was replaced, Cutler came once again under the command of Doctor Phlox, who was by no means the most congenial and helpful of tutors. The encouragement she had received from Doctor Lucas had started to build her confidence, however, and by that time my master had – for his own reasons, which he did not see fit to share with me – ‘taken her under his wing’. It is reasonable to suppose that Phlox was aware of that fact, which afforded her a measure of protection, though quite probably it also aroused the doctor’s resentment; for like all creatures of small spirit, he jealously guarded his sense of control over those beneath him.

My 'hope' was presently discovered to be well-founded, however, because quite suddenly the commodore’s attitude to me began to change. He had already stopped confining me to the cage in his absence, and now began to be more tolerant of my attempts to improve what I dared to regard (only in the confines of my own mind, of course) as _our shared_ environment by keeping it clean and tidy. On occasion, he would join me for a meal, shared at the desk and eaten in silence, but with no demand other than companionship. Some while later, he also allowed me access to a PADD containing media programs that for Humans constituted simple entertainment but for a Vulcan were alternately enlightening and mystifying. Finally – an act small in itself, but of gigantic significance in the scheme of things – he allowed me access to a book entitled _1984_. The book itself had come from the library of the _Defiant_. In that ship's alternate universe, it was a work of what was called ‘dystopian fiction’. It was just one of many works from that other reality that the Empress suppressed when she took power, and even to acknowledge its previous existence was treasonous. It was easy to see why, because although it had been written long ago and in another world where the Empire never arose in its present form, it prophesied its rise and rationale, and provided a chilling insight into the present state of affairs.

After I had read it, I understood Humans considerably better, though respected them less. My fear of them was not significantly altered, for the book merely proved that they were easily controlled and believed that brutality, deceit and coercion were legitimate tools for exerting and maintaining that control, if one could once make the step to power – all things that had been amply demonstrated on my own person.

The sharing of the book was the clearest possible demonstration that Commodore Tucker had begun to invest some measure of trust in me; after all, though the route to do so would not be easy, given the close constraints under which I was still held, it would not have been impossible to find some way to inform on him. It would have been entirely logical for him to have erased the presence of the book on the PADD after I returned it to him, but no electronic presence can be completely obliterated from discovery by the right people with the right tools, and there was small doubt that these would be employed once a credible accusation so serious was leveled at the man in charge of Jupiter Station.

I will admit that there have been moments when I've been tempted to do so. Such a gift to the authorities would almost certainly be well rewarded. It might even earn me my freedom. And after all, I am still a slave – still at the mercy of my master’s every whim, whether as the recipient of his ill temper or his lust; still an object whom he can order ejected from an airlock if the fancy takes him, or if it occurs to him to doubt whether his trust has been wisely placed. Slave or no, now I am _dangerous_ to him – not a good thing for a slave to be in any situation.

But no airlock has so far materialized. Slowly our relationship has continued to change. Shortly after he allowed me to read _1984,_ he revealed what had been going on in the Top Secret, strictly controlled area of Sickbay.

The concept was almost impossible for me to grasp. The Triad had established such a grip on power in the Empire that it was almost inconceivable that there had been a coup within it, unseen and unsuspected by the outside world. And yet Tucker spoke of it as an accomplished fact – had himself seen now-General Reed, immobilized and helpless, impregnated with the artificially conceived child of the other two.

I could only speculate as to the reasons why they had chosen to take this course of action rather than simply choose some young, fertile, unimportant Human female as the recipient of the precious embryo. Her body would have been far more suitable for its nourishment and sustainment, unlike that of the general, who although fit and healthy for his age would have to have his system constantly bombarded with hormones to prevent his body from rejecting both the alien uterus and the fetus it contained.

It was hard to avoid perceiving it as an act of almost unimaginable cruelty. Reed had not submitted willingly – he had not even been told what was happening, let alone given a choice. He was kept a prisoner in the most barbaric condition of confinement, compared to which my now abandoned cage was a palace of comfort. It was not even clear whether it was expected or even desired that he should survive the ordeal, but what was abundantly clear was that the creation of the child to come was of the utmost importance to its parents. Still more, that its existence would present extreme danger to everyone in the Empire, for it took little imagination to perceive that here was the heir to all the remaining power the Triad had exercised. It was not to be dreamed of that Alpha would be content to have his son act as the support of the Empress and whoever should follow her onto the throne. No, the throne itself would be the target, and although I had barely seen the man himself and Vulcans are not, in general, prone to flights of imagination, I had received the impression of a cold, brutal power that far transcended anything of which Humans are generally capable. This merely reinforced the few, terrified whispers I had heard up till now, which had explained all too clearly how a woman who had been merely a humble lieutenant on an Imperial starship had been able to step up to claim (and subsequently maintain) possession of the throne; as well as the newly-discovered _Defiant_ , which was an irresistible arm of imperial power in the Fleet, she had support that made her all but invincible.

With this in mind, I had no hesitation in putting into words what I was quite certain was already in the commodore’s mind. He had to find some way to kill them all. There was no negotiating with such a force, and we had no means of defeating it. For Alpha, and probably General Gomez as well (for she seemed to be completely in his thrall), the only solution was death.

For General Reed the situation was not quite so simple. He was their victim, as he had so often made others his victim; the situation was not without its piquancy in that respect. But whether or not he had earned such a fate, his condition presented a clear and present danger to the Empire. If the child survived, the world as we knew it was quite probably in extreme hazard. Therefore it was our clear and present duty to make sure that did not happen, and if in the process the general himself was released from what was undoubtedly his state of acute suffering, that would be an additional mercy.

That my master would trust _me_ enough to share this information and trust _my judgment_ enough to seek advice on how to manage the situation might have marked a major turning point in our relationship, but one would not know it from our daily interactions. He still left his quarters early each morning, leaving me to occupy myself with cleaning and tidying the small space that we shared, watching those entertainment and news programs he allowed me to access, or reading the limited selection of human literature he had downloaded to my PADD. He worked hard while he was on duty – if asked, I would say his diligence and industriousness are among his greatest virtues – and came back to his quarters in the evening.

Sometimes when his work was done for the day, we would talk. He would tell me things about his childhood on Earth, or about Human customs or about something amusing or exciting or frightening that had happened on the station that day. Sometimes, conversely, he would pay me no more attention than he did the furniture as he sat at his desk and caught up on reports or reading his professional journals. At those times, he might not even trouble himself to encourage me or shrug me off when I attempted to relax him for sleep with Vulcan neuro-pressure. Sometimes, he would use me sexually, and though it was no longer as savage and brutal as our earlier couplings, there was still no question of my desires in the matter. It was my duty and my purpose to please him in all things, regardless of my own feelings. The fact that these interactions had been made marginally more tolerable by our developing personal relationship made me no less his slave, but it did in some fashion make me more tolerantly disposed to being mastered by him.

There was one moment only when I fell into Vulcan jealousy that might have done damage to our fledgling relationship. I knew that he still communicated with Lieutenant Cutler, who was apparently condemned to be one of those in constant attendance on her former master, General Reed. I knew that the commodore had an affection for her. But one night when he returned to the cabin I smelled her on him, and it was immediately apparent that they had had a sexual encounter.

It should have meant nothing. I was still a slave, he was still my master, and according to the law he was entitled to the favors of any being who took his fancy; I was certainly not entitled in any way to resent his having sexual congress with anyone he chose. But such a jealous rage seized me that I could not be content until I had erased every last trace of that hated smell from his skin and left my own upon it, whether he would nor no.

Such behavior in a slave was past the bounds of pardon. But Trip was excited, amused and understanding. Whatever he had had from Cutler was nothing to what he had from me that night, and I made sure that next time lust moved in him it was of me he would think first; if I was _his_ slave, he was _my_ master – the possession was not merely in one direction.

And now this evening, he has finally explained why he and Cutler occasionally went through the pretense of being lovers; it was the one way and place in which they could safely exchange information and counsel, particularly with General Gomez and Alpha on the station. The explanation has placated me somewhat, though I am still not quite able to regard her with equanimity even so. I have neither forgotten nor forgiven the occasion when she came to his quarters and slapped him, even if he appears to have done both; nor will I find myself particularly amenable to the possibility of them sharing a bed again in the future.

Yet it is utterly unseemly that my thoughts are preoccupied with my master's sexual dalliances, even if he has told me that my status, at least in his presence, has been upgraded to that of a full person with control over her own body. Events of far greater significance than these have moved in the most unexpected of ways. He arranged for the explosion that destroyed Sickbay and killed both General Gomez and Alpha, as well as Phlox and many of his minions, and that does not surprise me – when we discussed the matter, I advised him that it was his only recourse. But contrary to all expectation, he rescued General Reed and is now planning to recruit him as an ally against the Empire of which he was for so long one of the most implacable supporters.

In this, I cannot know whether he is wise. As part of my initial interrogation aboard _Enterprise_ I was subjected to the sexual demands of the Head of Security, and although I knew that my very life depended upon submitting, I was nevertheless aware that Major Reed was a cruel and evil man, who derived as much pleasure from the pain he inflicted on me as from the sexual acts themselves. I cannot believe that the ordeal he has undergone will have improved his nature in any way; on the contrary, I would expect him to be bitter and vengeful, determined to punish to the maximum anyone he holds in any way responsible for his plight.

Trip himself was responsible for his capture on the day of his arrival. As a direct result of that capture he was handed over to be drugged, surgically altered, raped and impregnated. And if he is in search of those responsible, the commodore’s name will be the first on the list, for it was he who effectively enabled the whole train of events to be set in motion.

Justice would point out that Trip had received orders, and had no choice but to obey them. But it is quite beyond the imagination that the general will feel himself constrained by the demands of justice if he recovers both his health and his freedom, and takes back the reins of power.

I realize that there could soon be potential here to turn circumstances to my favor and exact some form of revenge on my master; and there are a number of logical reasons why I might choose to do so. For all that he says I am free to determine for myself what is done to my body, under the law all he need do to revoke my emancipation is change his mind. On a broader scale, as the man in charge of building and maintaining the Imperial Fleet, he has been extraordinarily effective; and as long as the Empire retains military superiority, the other races that live within its borders will always be slaves and vassals to the largely bigoted and xenophobic Humans. Furthermore, though the Empress never held me in much esteem even when she was a mere lieutenant and captains' consort (and she did consort with more than one of them) on the _Enterprise,_ if such an arrogant, overreaching, self-serving creature as the late Doctor Phlox could prove himself so useful to the Triad that he earned the unheard-of privilege for an alien of commanding his own secret research project staffed by a few dozen Humans, could I not, by revealing to the Empress the snake in her garden – Commodore Tucker, the traitor and seditionist – at the very least, earn myself the indulgence of manumission and the privilege of doing something useful again? With my liberty and a purpose, with work to do that might give me reason to move about the station or even through the Empire, I could resume my fight for my people's freedom and the freedom of all non-Humans who are being oppressed beneath the yoke of the Empire.

And yet I feel almost traitorously disinclined to turn against my master. It has taken time, an almost unendurably long time, but he has become a _good_ master. Just this evening, he has given me something useful to do, and when I accomplished my assigned task, he thanked me for my effort. The plans that he has outlined may not precisely align with my greatest desires, but if he achieves his goals, it will indirectly improve the lives of my fellow Vulcans and the other alien subjects of the Empire and bring the eventual liberation of alien slaves somewhat closer.

My reasons for remaining loyal to Commodore Tucker are completely logical. Any personal benefits I may derive are purely incidental.

Entirely.


	2. 6-10

**Chapter Six**

**Gone**

_Empress Hoshi Sato_

_They’re gone._

I can hardly believe it, but there was no arguing with the camera feeds. And Commodore Tucker’s report left no room for doubt either.

It’s so completely unexpected, so baffling, so _enormous_ , that I don’t know how to feel about it.

_This was not supposed to happen._

Well, OK. My first reaction was joy. I’ll admit that. Because for all that I’m the one who sits on the Imperial throne, it was clear enough in reality who actually wielded the power. The decisions I was occasionally allowed to make were of very limited importance, and rarely enacted without being passed for approval. So now I’m the Empress _with the power._

And as I’m human, that wasn’t something I was going to shed any tears over.

I suppose it has to be said that having to meekly obey a summons to join any or all of the Triad in bed won’t be something I’ll miss (though I’ll be honest here, it was usually plenty worth it when I got there). As Empress I can summon as many playthings as I feel like accommodating on any given occasion, but there was just some … something about those three (Alpha in particular, though Reed reflected it like an echo) that got me so damned horny, whether I was actually in the mood or not. So yeah, I’ll miss that part of it all right, if not the feeling of being the genie when the bottle gets rubbed.

Reed was an asshole. He got rid of May weather on a pretext, but I’m guessing it was because he wanted to be the only one giving me advice. That was the point at which I really found out just how little real power I had, and how much I didn't, when I couldn’t even save Travis.

Though I have to admit, the advice I got afterwards was still good. (Reed played chess all the time on _Enterprise,_ and almost always won, so he had that kind of a mentality. By the time you’d played your second pawn he’d mentally removed your King’s Bishop and your Queen’s Knight and was already moving up against the Queen’s Rook.)

But almost at once it’s started to dawn on me that for all the Triad were nakedly brutal about the fact that behind closed doors I was the Empress pretty well in name only, at least outside them I _was **the Empress**_. If I didn’t have their power, I had some, and they made damn sure I was accorded the appropriate respect at all times – even bowing to me themselves in public. And I had their protection, which was to say I was pretty damn invulnerable. I was one of the few who were excused from watching that demonstration of ‘lingchi’ on some poor bastard who’d pissed Reed off over something at some point, but I watched a bit of it just for interest, and I don’t think many people would have cared to volunteer themselves for a second victim; it was widely circulated that anyone who laid a finger on me would have more of the same, but slower. So after that I felt kind of safe against anything.

But now the Triad is gone, the last remaining vestige of it apparently at Death's door, and while Trip assures me he can maintain my protection, I feel naked without them. The MACO contingent they controlled is up for grabs, too, I think, despite Trip's additional assurances that he has resources to manage them as well. I can make the right noises and could have even executed a few people (if Trip had found anyone still alive to take the blame), but I’m all too aware that I’m more vulnerable than I’ve been since I assumed the throne. 

For all his good intentions, I think my Imperial Chief of Engineering is overreaching. For one thing, while nearly every engineer in the fleet might be loyal to him, they're hardly the fighting force the MACOs represent. They might be able to bring every ship in the fleet to a dead stop, but that would only leave the Empire open to attack on all fronts. To actually _take over_ those ships and bring them to bear in my defense would take more power and more military organization and discipline than I think the Corps of Engineers possess.

Starfleet Command is another major threat Trip might not have considered. They've been several links down on the food chain for a while now, and there are some hard, ambitious bastards among them who I wouldn’t trust as far as I could throw them. Oddly enough Erika Hernandez is the first to spring to mind, which doesn't make much sense because she's always been one of my staunchest supporters. That's just the problem, though. She's always been just a little bit _too_ agreeable, almost as if she has no ideas, plans, or ambitions of her own – like a parasite, and I can't help but feel that I am her host. A rich host – I make sure of that – but a host even so.

Maybe I’m just being paranoid about Erika, but I can't help remembering how Max Forrest chose Jon Archer as his first officer precisely because Jon appeared to be unambitious. Thinking of Jon reminds me that he and Erika went through training together, and as I recall, they retained some degree of loyalty to one another even after they went off to separate assignments. As comm. officer on the _Enterprise_ I handled a number of messages between them over the years, and their continued association was the main reason I had decided Archer had to die when I took over the _Defiant_. Of course, I blamed his death on an unknown assailant and had Travis dispose of his body before it could be examined, so there is a chance that Erika doesn't hold me responsible for that. There's also the chance that she's as practical as I am and has long ago accepted that Archer was simply overreaching himself and suffered the natural consequences of failure.

Still, even if Erika's not out to get me, there are plenty in the Fleet who are.

You could have knocked me down with a feather when Tucker told me what had happened on Jupiter Station, though. My mind keeps going back to it, over and over again. _What_ was going on in that medical facility, that was so damned secret even he wasn’t allowed to enter? Maybe it was some kind of new secret biological weapon – that would account for Reed being there, he was like a hound on point as soon as some new way of killing people was mentioned.

How he survived a blast like that, though – just goes to prove the Devil looks after his own. Considering he was catching up with Liz Cutler at the time (ha!), I have to wonder whether she's feeling grateful or resentful to still be alive herself. At a guess, it probably ate Trip up to not be able to prevent Reed sniffing around her again. From what I hear, he and Crazy Cutler have become close over the past several years, and after what Reed did to her on _Enterprise_ she probably regressed to the pathetic little whimpering bitch she used to be just seeing him in the corridors of Jupiter Station. At any rate Reed lived to tell the tale, though Tucker says he’s so badly injured it’ll probably be months before he’s fit for duty again, and there's some kind of poetic justice in his body having sheltered Cutler from the worst of the blast. I'm not very sentimental, but on that count I'm glad for her. After what he did to me while the Triad ruled from behind the throne, I can imagine how he treated her; her safety at his expense seems at least a start on compensation for what she must have endured on _Enterprise_. But whatever the case with Cutler, _I_ still need someone with a power bloc to support me, and someone with luck as well as power would be even more of a bonus. Reed survived the Gorn booby-trap and now he’s survived a blast that took out dozens of people in the same area; maybe it’ll be third time unlucky, so we have to take good care of him while he’s recovering.

But that’s our secret, Trip's and mine. Reed's being hidden somewhere, and I can understand why even I’m not allowed to know where. If he’s still alive he still has the potential to be a threat, and it’s very much in my interest for him to stay that way – just in case Erika or anyone else finally decides to make a move. I can’t be made to confess what I don’t know, whatever drugs or torture they might use on me.

I’ll admit it – I’m wondering what role Tucker himself is playing in all this. He’s not married, he’s getting his itches scratched by that Vulcan slave of his; but is that enough to stop him eyeing the throne beside me?

Is he playing a long game, or is he really the loyal servant he’s always made himself out to be?

On balance, I doubt if he’s aiming that high. For one thing, though he’s basically lord and master of everything he surveys on Jupiter Station and I’ve no doubt that he commands a lot of loyalty around the Fleet, that’s not quite the muscle you need if you’re planning a bid for the throne. Reed, on the other hand – especially now that blue-eyed bastard’s been blown to hell – _does_ have that kind of muscle.

Maybe Trip _is_ playing a long game – just not the obvious one….

I can’t be bothered summoning a slave to pour my drink. I tip the crystal jug myself, filling the tumbler with ice-cold fruit juice. I could call for wine, but I need all my wits about me now.

Why the hell would Trip advance Reed to power? He hated the guy’s guts on _Enterprise –_ they used to amuse Archer no end, he called them his pitbulls on leashes. Sometimes, he even did things to provoke them into going after one another. 

But whatever else Reed was (and still is), first and foremost he was a realist. He may have offered Tucker some kind of a deal – ‘keep me safe, get me to power and you can name your price’.

Sometimes I wondered whether I might end up coerced into marrying Alpha. I’m relieved beyond words that it never happened, for all that the guy sure knew what to do in a bed.

Would it be so terrible, having to marry Reed – if that was the price he demanded for his support?

For that matter, if Tucker really is aiming high, would marrying him be such a bad thing? Our relationship has actually become more congenial in the years since we brought back the _Defiant_ , even to the point that I often _enjoy_ our conversations when he calls me. He's the only member of my inner circle – the officers and advisers granted the privilege of contacting me directly – who never complains, and he's the only one who always has a solution in mind when he does come to me with a problem. It's almost as if he's considered the difficulties of my position and actively seeks to make things easier for me.

Just find a decent surgeon to fix that face of his and …

Tucker or Reed, it makes little difference, except that with Tucker I imagine his little Vulcan plaything would occupy him at least part of the time. Either way, I’m no slouch in the ‘realist’ stakes myself. If that’s what it takes, that’s what I’ll do. I’m sure Reed would have some witty things to say in private, but at least I can be sure that in public he’ll insist I’m shown the due respect. Tucker has always been the perfect gentleman with me, so even if he is dull and unattractive, at least I will feel appreciated. I miss Travis for that. He was always so appreciative.

I wander to the balcony, still sipping my drink, and stare out at the darkening sky. If I had a telescope here I could pick out Jupiter Station quite easily, that massive duranium satellite orbiting its planet like another of its attendant moons.

Wherever else he is, I’ll bet my bottom credit that Reed’s not there any longer. That, after all, is where people will look for him, if and when the news of his survival leaks out.

Well. It’ll take a while for the news to spread and the mud to settle and the sharks to start circling. In the meantime, I can only hold on and hope.

* * *

**Chapter Seven**

**Impersonation**

_Commodore Charles Tucker III_

Looking around me at the empty bridge of the _Fortress_ , I can't help squirming slightly at the imaginary sensation of something slithering across my skin. Alpha's ship has been empty for days – the Empress helped me with that by recalling all his personnel to Earth for 'debriefing.' Liz told me she was 'fairly certain' that everyone involved with The Project was present in the sickbay when it blew; it was kept so Top Secret that the people who actually got to participate in what was going on were never going to be allowed out till the thing was over and successful – and maybe even then some ‘accident’ might have ensured that none of them got to blab about what they’d witnessed. She was the one exception to the rule, because she’d never have endangered her access to Reed by shooting her mouth off. I pray she's right about that, or at least, if she's wrong, that nobody who was here at the time was aware how much _I_ knew about what was going on in my own Sickbay.

The Empress would not be amused to discover I’d been keeping from her a secret as monumental as Reed's imprisonment and forcible impregnation by the other two members of the Triad.

She would not be amused at all.

But for all my belief – it’s a bit stronger than ‘hope’, but I’m not sure you could call it ‘conviction’ – that I’m alone on the ship, and my absolute certainty that Alpha himself was blown to the back end of Hell by the explosion in Sickbay, still this place gives me the sick, creepy feeling that he might be waiting behind the turbo-lift door, ready to listen to me committing High Treason before walking out with that sweet, terrifying smile of his and choking the life out of me with his bare hands.

It’s pure imagination, of course. I’ve checked the lift car three times, and it’s still standing there quiet and empty. But I’d defy anyone who’d met that blue-eyed bastard to forget just how gut-clenchingly scary he could be.

I take a seat in the captain’s chair, as Reed would naturally do. Then I clear my throat, swallow hard, wipe my sweaty hands on my pants, and give Ensign Baird a nod. I'd have done anything to keep young Paul out of this, but I wasn't the one to drag him into it in the first place. Once Alpha and Em commandeered him to create the Reed-spoofing program that kept General Chaos's presence alive among the MACOs while he was actually strapped to Phlox's bio-bed, my young, brilliant communications engineer was pretty well stuck. Briefly I’d considered recruiting T'Pol to reconfigure the program to adapt to my speech patterns and habits, because her connection and proximity to me provide her with a pretty damned heavy layer of protection that I can't offer Paul, but being Vulcan, she doesn't really have the ear for human accents and idioms.

Thank god she at least had the presence of mind to suggest I practice with the program before putting it into use. I really had no idea how heavy my Southern accent still was until I heard the recording of ‘Reed’ delivering a speech with it. Had I tried to use it without recalibrating it to my manner of speaking, I’d absolutely guarantee that the listening MACOs would have thought he was drunk or high or under some enemy influence coercing him to deliver this speech. Within less than a minute of hearing his CO dropping d's and g's like confetti and rounding out his long i's to ah's, my security chief would have been up here to check that he was all right, _do not disturb_ orders be damned. And knowing Austin, if he’d been refused entry, he'd have returned with an assault team, either blasting his way in through the airlock doors or beaming directly onto the bridge. And then wouldn't all hell have broken loose when he barged in and caught me red-handed in the act of treason, impersonating the Head of Imperial Security?

I wonder briefly if Hoshi would defend me. Probably not, when she’d found out what the hell game I’d been playing behind her back.

Then Baird cues me, silently counting down five seconds on his fingers and pointing at me as the light on the screen in front of me goes green and I go 'live' to every MACO CO in the fleet.

Actually, none of us are quite completely 'live' on this call. Baird is running the whole thing through a buffer, which will give him an eight-second delay to fake a technical glitch that won't expose me as the man behind the curtain in the event that one that would expose me crops up.

At least no one will suspect anything about the slight delay. Given the vast distances between ships, it's standard practice to buffer all Imperial transmissions, particularly teleconferences such as this one, so that the outlying participants can keep up with the conversation. Otherwise, the transmission lag time would have them falling behind and continually rehashing topics that those of us closer to home had already considered closed.

The light goes red, and I give myself just a couple of seconds to get my nerve up. Then, I take a quiet breath and begin.

"Greetings, and thank you all for being here."

I don't know how formal Reed usually is with his people, but I imagine, with hundreds of officers watching, he'd be even more polite than usual, and he always did have impeccable manners, when he wanted to that is.

"I trust all of you have had time to read the Imperial Press Release issued from the Palace by now. If not, what I am about to say is likely to come as a shock. I ask that you refrain from interrupting with questions until you have read the release. It should provide you with all the additional information you need.

"Some of you have asked about a memorial service."

I know this because the Empress has given me permission to let someone monitor all Reed's incoming communication. That 'someone', naturally, is Baird, poor kid, since only he and I know that I have the ability to put on the general's face and respond on his behalf. Frankly, both Baird and I are astonished by how many people have the balls or the lack of brains to disturb a formidable man such as the general after he has officially declared himself in mourning and asked to be left alone. At a guess, some of them will only survive because he wasn’t the one picking up the mail.

"I assure you, a service will most certainly be planned, though I can't at this moment speculate about the date. I am sure you all realize, and knowing General Hayes and General Gomez as I do … as I did, I am certain they would agree, that it is far more important for us to make sure the various projects they spearheaded are well in hand and progressing appropriately before we devote our energies to marking their passing. Though they were both respected leaders, they were also loyal and devoted servants of the Empire, and would not want their tragic and untimely deaths to cause her to fail or falter in any way.”

I remind myself to take a breath, so my nervousness doesn’t become obvious from the way I’m rushing. Then I let my stare into the camera narrow slightly.

"Some of you have asked about my well-being."

I allow myself a small smirk at this. I have no doubt Reed would be at least as amused as he would be pissed off to think that those who asked out of a genuine concern for him are at least equaled (and more than likely overwhelmingly outnumbered) by those who asked in the hope that they would discover that a cold draft is all it would take to blow him across the threshold of Death's door.

"Have no fear. I am well. The explosion and the tragic loss of my closest colleagues has been a shock, but my mission as the Head of Imperial Security and the needs of the Empire are as clear to me now as they ever were. I have no doubts about my duties or my ability to fulfil them. I will carry on, and I expect you all to do the same.

"Specifically, I expect all of you obey your standing orders, to uphold the laws of the Empire and the Uniform Code of Imperial Military Justice, to protect our borders, our colonies, and our Imperial Military Facilities as you always have, and in all other respects to maintain the _status quo_. Meanwhile, I will be co-ordinating with the Empress, the Fleet Admirals, and the Terran Planetary Forces to maintain homeworld security and advance the special projects Generals Hayes and Gomez were overseeing.

"Each of us has our duty to the Empire. I will do mine, and I am hereby ordering each of you to do yours.

"Reed out."

I continue looking into the camera, trying to project that air of cold arrogance Reed could do so well, until Baird says, "We're good, Chief."

Then, I slump back into the Captain’s chair and try not to hyperventilate.

"Jesus Christ," I mutter softly to myself as I try to catch my breath, and I'm not sure whether I'm cussing or praying. It's only now that I realize how fucking terrified I was, pretending to be that evil little bastard and hoping I got it close enough to right that no one will be suspicious…or at least that no one will suspect that I was not who I claimed to be. Only a fool would not be suspicious about _something_ when dealing with Reed.

"Let's play it back, Paul, an' make sure I sounded enough like an uptight, half-crazy Englishman to fool the MACOS, if not his own mother."

The speech seems to have gone through all right. Maybe my word choice and mannerisms aren't exactly what Reed's would be, but that can be explained away as grief and shock, and down the road, it can even be suggested that the shock and the loss have changed him. But giving a speech to a group and not having to respond to any of their questions and concerns is one thing; having a one-on-one chat with some admiral of the chief of security for some outpost could be quite another, and it would only take one slip to start the whole thing unraveling.

When I mention my concerns regarding the latter to Paul, he shakes his head and says, "I wouldn't advise it yet, Chief. Your Southern dialect rich in idioms that the program struggles to translate and your accent is full of deviations from Imperial Standard. I'm having trouble streamlining the algorithms to overlay the General's speech patterns onto yours without causing a noticeable delay. I had a bitch of a time adapting it to General Gomez, too, but I got it eventually, and I'll get your accent nailed down, too, sir, but it’ll take time. I would suggest you communicate through memos for the time being, or make a very polite request to the Empress to issue some orders on General Reed's behalf."

Well, I appreciate his confidence, but that last suggestion of his tells me a whole lot about how much he knows, or at least thinks he knows, about what is going on. Probably a whole lot more than he’s safe even thinking about.

I catch his eye. "Did Hayes and Gomez ever tell you why they needed to be able to imitate General Reed, Paul?"

"No, sir, I didn't know, and I never wanted to know," he says, giving me back look for look. "And if it's all the same to you, I don't really want to know what you're up to either. I figure the less I know, the safer it is for everyone involved. I can't be made to confess what I don't know, and I'm less likely to die for treason if I can claim ignorance and say I was just following orders."

I like Ensign Baird. He seems like a good kid. Though I never would have pegged him for such a pragmatist.

"I appreciate your candor, Ensign," I tell him. "An' just in case you were wonderin', but were too polite or too smart to ask, General Reed really _is_ still alive, but not up to takin’ control right now. So till he’s back up to full power the Empress an' I are just tryin' to keep the Empire from fallin' into a civil war, which is what's likely to happen if the senior MACOs and the Fleet admirals start dukin' it out to see who gets to fill the void left by losin' two of the three generals in charge."

He grins at me then, and gives an audible sigh of relief.

"That's good to know, sir, but you didn't have to tell me," he says.

"You're in this mess clear up to your eyeballs, son," I point out. "An' you have been from day one. If anyone has a right to know, I'd say it's you." And yes, I suppose I am a hypocrite for not telling him about The Project, but apart from protecting Reed's dignity and privacy, I know from personal experience how disturbing it is to think about what was done to him by the people he trusted. Baird already understands the risk he's taken by creating this program. He wasn't involved in any of the rest of it and doesn't need to contemplate how his work facilitated it.

"I know _you_ , sir," he says emphatically. "I know what kind of man you are, and it's enough for me to trust your good intentions."

"Well, sonofabitch," I breathe, feeling the guilt of what I’ve actually been involved in pressing down on me almost as though I’d somehow actually knowingly consented to it. "No pressure there, then."

He looks at me intently and says, "There shouldn't be, Commodore. You're doing the best you can. Sometimes things don't go the way you might expect. That doesn't make you wrong for trying."

For the first time I realize that his eyes are grey, like Reed's, but somehow warmer.

When in the fuck did I become _the guy_? The one that everybody trusts. I might not be as evil and screwed up as General Reed, but still, are they out of their cotton-pickin’ minds?

And yet I'm moved by his faith in me, and I need a moment to steady myself before I reply.

"I appreciate what you're sayin', Paul, but I want you to make me a promise."

"Name it, sir."

I'm telling you, this kid is crazy. Doesn't even ask what I want first.

"If things go to hell an' it looks like I'm gonna hang, I want you to promise me you'll do whatever it takes to save your own ass." I hold his eyes with my own, hammering the message home. "I don't want you or anybody else sufferin' on my account."

At least he has the brains to think it over before he answers. "You have my word, sir, I won't let you take me down with you," he says at last, just as sincerely as he did when he told me how much he believed in me. Seems his idealism does have some pragmatism mixed in with it after all.

Maybe those grey eyes aren't the only thing Baird has in common with Reed.

And if I'm extraordinarily lucky, maybe that cold pragmatism won't always be the only thing _Reed_ has in common with _Baird._

* * *

**Chapter Eight**

**Disappearing Act**

_Commodore Charles Tucker III_

I glance over my shoulder back the way I came, trying to keep it subtle just in case there’s someone behind me. Any passers-by would just think I’m on one of my routine inspection tours of the station, but I still don't want to be seen headed to where I am actually going. If I had company, I’d have bypassed my destination and come back later, when I was alone, but the coast is clear so I turn down the narrow corridor off to my left and key my code into the door at the end.

I don't know the official population criteria for a small city, but Jupiter Station sure feels like one. We have a permanent crew of about four thousand, two hundred – or will have, once the Sickbay and adjoining sections are replaced, repaired and fully staffed – and another three hundred or so rotating staff who come in every six weeks for refresher and update training or final polishing before they're assigned their first starship posting. Add to that a standard guest capacity of roughly twelve hundred, and another three or four hundred 'day-trippers' – these being mostly cargo ship complements and couriers taking a bit of leave while they deliver our supplies or collect items sent up from Earth to distribute to the fleet – and we have roughly six thousand people on the station daily. In an emergency the likes of which Humanity has never seen, we have the theoretical capacity to house and feed ten times that many, though it would be pretty damned cramped quarters, and I hope I don't ever have to put that theory to the test because I'm not sure the plumbing is up for it and I know it means finding a way to use our top-secret labs as emergency quarters. With all those people milling about, not to mention surveillance cameras everywhere, it can be tricky sometimes to slip off unobserved, so I count myself lucky that I can do it the first time I try today.

Now, just about everybody who's been in space for a little while knows about the sweet spot, that place about halfway between the bow plate and the grav-generator on a starship where gravity inverts itself and you can sit your ass on the ceiling. Well, Jupiter Station has eight of those, one in each saucer section and one in the lower part of each pylon about midway between the bottom saucer and the sensor array.

People who are musically inclined sometimes look for acoustically ideal locations for their instruments. Over the years I’ve found crewmen singing opera, blues, and gospel, and playing flutes, cellos, clarinets and violins in dead-end corridors, access tube junctions, maintenance closets, and even a solid waste resequencer holding chamber, although that poor bastard was only trying to make the best of a bad situation as he was assigned to clean and repair the unit and just happened to discover that his golden baritone resonated perfectly as he sang old Negro spirituals in time to the rhythmic splash and splat of his mucking-out shovel. When I asked him how he could stand the stench – he was wearing a filter mask, but not a breather – he just laughed and told me he'd lost his sense of smell due to an injury when he served on a battleship, so he usually volunteered for the nasty jobs since it wasn't such a hardship for him. I just shook my head and put him in for a promotion from crewman third class to first class. As far as I was concerned, he deserved to skip over second just for volunteering to shovel human shit.

What most people _don't_ know about, though (and those of us who do tend not to advertise) are the dead zones. Every vessel of any size has at least one location where overlapping energy fields and shielding make it impossible for internal sensors to ever penetrate. Due to the geometry of most structures and the noise of nearby equipment that helps to create the dead zones, these places often occur in areas where it’s impractical for people to gather for any purpose, so they're usually not even monitored on closed-circuit video. A glitch in sensor programming that even most security officers have yet to discover prevents an internal sweep from revealing null results. Instead of showing an unreadable sector or a missing portion of the structure, they show the space exactly as it appears on the schematics. I’ve found four dead zones on Jupiter Station, one in the top and bottom saucer sections of each pylon, and it’s into the top one on the west pylon that I disappear now.

I started setting this location up about three years ago, at the same time as I was wrapping up the construction of my secret shuttle. If I was ever going to be beamed off the station to a cloaked shuttle, I couldn't very well dematerialize in full view of the security cameras. If I’d been able to work openly, I'd have had this room fully installed, tested and running in two or three days, but with secrecy being a concern, it took me six months. Now, I only use this location for one purpose – not that it wouldn't be useful for other things, too, but it wouldn't do for the station's CO to drop off the internal sensor grid too often. I’ve already informed Hess and Rostov that’ll need 'coverage' until 18:00, so they know if anyone comes to them looking for me, they are to send that person to the other one and give the other a heads up, then contact me on my private channel. Whether Rostov sends them to Hess or vice versa, whoever they come to last will tell them I said something about inspecting some access tubes. Since the station has literally miles of access tubes and I could be anywhere on an inspection, this will ensure that whoever is looking for me stops and pages me instead. Any pages through the comm. system will be routed through a signal booster installed in this room and sent to my PADD.

I flip a switch now that creates a sensor ghost of me crawling through the access tubes, on the unlikely chance that someone checks internal sensors for me. In the even more unlikely event that they come looking for me and don't find me after seeing my ghost on the sensors, I'll declare a fault in the system and order one of the noobs assigned here for his final polishing to track it down. When his six-week tour is up and he’s ready to ship out on a starship, I'll determine it was 'just a glitch' and we don't need to worry about it unless it happens again. The station is big enough that we do have glitches like this on a fairly regular basis, most of which we resolve by resetting the affected system and running a diagnostic on restart. So, as long as I don't vanish or appear to be where I am not too often, I should be safe.

I activate the ghost program, pull up the secondary communications application on my PADD (which transmits on those old diplomatic channels that I like so much), and hail a taxi.

"Tucker to _Lizzie_ , I'm ready for transport," I say.

"Lizzie _here_ ," Corporal Amanda Cole's voice is a little tinny coming through the PADD, but it's clear enough. " _Stand by, Commodore_."

It's true what they say about transporting: you _can_ feel your molecules being pulled apart, but what that _feels like_ depends on the type and efficiency of transporter you're using. My daddy once told me that when he served in the Imperial Fleet, it felt for a split second like being doused with scalding water. Back in his day, as part of basic training you had to successfully complete thirty transport drills where you were called out at random to go to the nearest transporter room and be sent somewhere else. Successful completion was defined by stepping off the pad at your destination, identifying and reporting to the senior officer present, requesting an assignment and completing it without any hesitation or delay. It was brutal, he admitted, but it kept men alive, because when you were transporting onto an enemy vessel or into an alien colony uprising during a firefight, you couldn't take a second or two to get over the shock of the pain, let alone a minute.

In those days, sometimes a recruit or a whole platoon would be scheduled for transport drills as punishment. That happened to Daddy once, when one of his barracks mates left a contraband political newsletter in the head. The drill instructor didn't know who was responsible, so all twenty guys transported from the Lunar One Colony training facility to the old Orbital Docking Station and back half a dozen times without a break before one of his buddies actually fled out a docking port rather than face one more trip. Three days later, another guy in his platoon left a note behind confessing that the contraband literature had belonged to him, and then, setting the transporter to a wide beam dispersion pattern, he scattered his molecules from L1C to Earth.

When I joined the Fleet, transporting felt more like having a giant adhesive bandage ripped off your whole body all at once. It still wasn't pleasant, but as a punishment, it was more on the level of getting our asses smacked than being tortured to the point of suicide for a confession.

Nowadays, we’ve improved and enhanced the technology with designs from the _Defiant._ As the transporter beam grabs me, I feel a faint tingle, like the sensation of static electricity you get from a balloon after you've rubbed it against a woolly sweater. What I always find more disconcerting is that moment just before arrival when you can see the world around you but you can't move in it because you're not really there. I've had nightmares about being stuck in that moment due to a transporter glitch, and I've told several people that if that ever happens, when my pattern degrades, I want them to just disperse me and clear the pattern buffer. I'd rather Mama and Daddy find out I was lost in an accident and there was nothing left than to get me back as a deformed lump of lifeless flesh or a puddle of goo.

As the interior of the _Lizzie_ coalesces around me, I can see Amanda Cole in the pilot's seat, working the transporter controls. She's a good girl, Amanda, my own personal MACO, and I'd trust her to do just about anything. I'd first noticed her around the station about three years ago, when she was still just a private, and I liked what I saw. She always had a smile ready and seemed to get along with everybody. When new MACOS rotated in, she was usually in charge of the welcome-wagon, and anybody who couldn't find a table full of friends in the mess hall would find a friend in her. So I snooped into her records a little bit; asked Rostov, Hess, and Cutler to keep an eye on her and tell me what they learned; and invited myself to have lunch with her once or twice. I found her to be fearless, smart, and thoughtful – both in the sense of considering the needs of others and in the sense that she considered the possible consequences of her actions before she made a move. My Chief of Security, MACO Major Austin Burnell, spoke highly of her, confirming my impression of her and even saying he'd promote her if he had the slot for another corporal.

Burnell's recommendation sealed it for me. I'd never brought him in to my confidence the way I had Rostov, Hess, and Liz, but he was the first person on Jupiter Station that I learned I could trust. He was appointed to the station by Reed, which obviously made me very wary of him to start with, but Jupiter Station was probably one of the most important in the entire Empire and even I knew that when it came to appointing the right guy for the job, his boss was invariably spot-on. Not a mad dog like Reed, far from it, Burnell was, hands down, the most reasonable, tolerant, and sensible MACO I'd ever met to that point. Once I was placed in charge of the station, I invited him into my office for drinks a few times; and as we sipped bourbon and talked, I discovered we thought alike on just about every subject that mattered. A couple of times, he even came a hair's breadth from dissension, and that's when I knew I’d found someone of a like mind. If not for the uniform, you'd think Austin was just your average Joe. So, with his recommendation (plus the blessings of Rostov, Hess, and Cutler, and a story for the Empress about how the materials, personnel, and prototypes for some of our secret projects on Jupiter Station really _should_ be transported by secure courier rather than a standard transport ship)Pfc. Amanda Cole got a bump in her clearance, a promotion to corporal, and a new assignment under my direct command as Security Attaché and Classified Projects Courier for Jupiter Station.

"How they hangin', 'Manda?" I ask as I step off the transporter pad in the _Lizzie._

"Free and easy, nice and breezy – _all_ MACOs go commando, sir!"

I can't help laughing at that; she gets me every time.

"Thanks for that, Corporal," I tell her as I drop into the co-pilot's seat. "I needed a laugh."

"Wasn't joking, sir," she replies briskly.

I give her a speculative glance and she does her best to appear innocent. I decide I don't really want to know the answers to any of the questions I might ask about her skivvies or lack thereof. Amanda might be a lot of fun to have around, but sometimes she scares me.

Just a little.

"So, what's the situation in the bunker?" I inquire instead.

"Doctor Salazar has had to return to his day job," she says, "leaving Lieutenant Cutler in charge of the general's care until he can return at the weekend."

"An’ how's the general?" I try not to make it obvious how anxious I am; I’ve taken a hell of a risk with this, whichever way it turns out, but it’d be just hell if we were to fail _now_. Still, though I’m no medic even I know how much of an ordeal this must have been for Reed; however tough the little bastard may have been when it started, he’s been under a physical, mental and emotional steam-roller for the past ten months or so, and _every_ body sooner or later reaches the point where it just can’t take any more.

"Still unconscious when I left to collect you, sir." When I frown, she adds, "Lieutenant Cutler seems considerably more worried about it than Doctor Salazar, but I suspect that has more to do with her feelings for the general than his actual condition. The doctor says his electroencephalogram shows he's transitioning from coma to sleep and will probably wake up sometime in the next twenty-four hours."

"I guess that's good news," I say, though I'm still not so sure about that.

"If you say so, sir," Amanda agrees, apparently sharing my uncertainty. I wonder what she might know about Reed that would give her doubts about saving him, but now is not the time to ask.

"Apart from the trauma he suffered as a result of The Project, his eyes were injured in the blast," she continues. "Doc calls it flash-blindness and says he should be fine, but his eyes will have to be bandaged for a couple days, and it might be a week or two before his vision is completely back to normal."

"Well that's just great," I grumble. "How the hell are we supposed to keep a paranoid maniac like Reed from just tearing the bandages off without dopin' him up or strappin' him to the bed?"

"Doctor Salazar couldn't answer that question either, so he ordered the general restrained until he came round and we could assess his understanding of the situation and determine whether he was capable of leaving the bandages in place."

"I'll bet Liz was thrilled with that," I comment sourly.

"Not so much, no, sir, but she couldn't offer a better solution, so she agreed, providing she's allowed to sit with him until he comes to."

"Sounds like a reasonable compromise." I think about it, but I can’t come up with anything better either, so I let it stand. "And how _is_ Liz doin'?"

Amanda considers her answer for a moment. I'm not the least bit surprised she isn't sure what to say. Nothing about Liz Cutler is cut and dried, and where Malcolm is concerned, it's a whole lot closer to dark and murky and more than a little fetid.

"She's in a lot of turmoil, sir," Amanda finally decides. "She's grateful to you for saving the general and arranging for her to be close to him, but she's still pretty annoyed at the way you made it happen. Being beamed out without warning was a traumatic surprise to say the least, and things just went downhill from there for a while.

“From what I could gather, she’s also sad about the baby, worried about the general, and resentful over being made to implant your control device in his chest – even though she admits she understands why it's necessary. To be honest, I don't know whether you should expect a hug or a knee to the groin next time you see her.”

I cut Cole a look and tell her grimly, "You don't know the half of it."

She darts me a measuring glance, her face a little troubled. "Permission to speak freely, sir?"

"Go ahead."

Even with this permission, she hesitates a bit, clearly arranging her question carefully. "Why involve someone so … complicated … in an operation as dangerous as this? Isn't she a liability?"

I don't even have to think about my answer.

"She's involved because, after everything she's been through, she, more than anyone else in the known Universe has earned the right to be a part of this," I tell her honestly. "She may be a pain in my ass, sometimes, I’ll grant you, but that doesn't necessarily make her a liability any more than your smart mouth does you. She's also the one person alive who wants this to work more than I do, an' the only person, myself an' Doctor Salazar included, whom I trust implicitly to care for the general an' keep him safe in his current fragile condition."

Her smooth brow wrinkles in puzzlement. "She loves him, doesn't she?"

"Yep."

"That's really all you had to say."

"Trust me, 'Manda, if this works out, it's all gonna be thanks to Liz Cutler," I say, knowing in my bones it's the truth. "What about my other guests?"

Amanda grins. "They're as excited to see you as I'm sure you are to see them," she says cheerfully. "And I've been instructed to warn you not to spoil your dinner because it's going to be pan-fried catfish and collard greens with pecan pie for dessert."

* * *

**Chapter Nine**

**Reunion**

_Commodore Charles Tucker III_

I'm barely out of the shuttle pod when I'm attacked by a damned little rat terrier.

"Trip Tucker, I have a bone to pick with you!" Liz Cutler is up in my face, giving me hell for saving her life and her boyfriend's life and bringing them together here, where they're safe, or at least as safe as anyone can be in the Empire right now with a great big goddamn void right at the top of the power structure and everybody and his brother considering whether or not they have what it takes to fill it."Do you have any idea how dangerous that little stunt you pulled was to Malcolm? And then to order me to implant your little 'insurance' device before he was even fully stabilized! My God, Trip! After everything he survived, he could have died at _my hands_ while I was obeying your orders under the direction of your little MACO thug girl!"

Of course, I understand why she might not quite see me as her and Malcolm's savior, thanks to Corporal Cole's report, and for that reason, and because she's had a couple of days to stew about it without a chance to confront me, I consider just letting her yap her head off until she's all barked out. Amanda’s within easy earshot and I’m guessing being referred to as ‘my little MACO thug girl’ won’t please her any, but I don’t suppose she thought Liz would be running for president of her fan club anyway.

"And what gives you the right to beam me off the station without warning anyway?" she rants on, poking her finger into my chest. "Just because you know I'll do anything you ask to help you help him doesn't mean you can go pulling strings in my life like I'm some kind of marionette that you can make dance for your amusement!"

Then I see our audience – Daddy, his arm around Mama, glowering at Liz and me, because, I'm sure, he can't believe I'd tolerate this kind of disrespect; Mama, huddled against Daddy's side, her arms around his waist, so desperate to hold me after all this time than she needs to anchor herself to him to keep from rushing me while I deal with Liz's insubordination; and my brother Bert and sister Rachel, whispering and snickering and probably speculating irreverently about the kind of relationship Liz and I must have that makes her think she can get away with publicly chewing my ass out – and suddenly I don't have time for this shit!

_"Ten-HUT!"_

It's well-known on Jupiter Station that my bark is usually worse than my bite, but it’s just as well known that when I start barking drill commands, someone is about to get bit in the ass. I'm also capable of what people call a commanding tone of voice, when necessary, and when I use it now, everyone who's ever been in any branch of the Imperial Armed Services obeys – including Mama and Daddy, who enlisted back in the day when you could leave the service after your first four-year tour of duty if you decided it wasn't for you and could prove you had opportunities elsewhere. Fortunately for Daddy, Granddaddy Tucker could offer him full-time work and a living wage as a farm hand and Mama was already engaged to Daddy when her chance came.

And, for a miracle, Liz Cutler has been shocked into remembering who she is and who I am. She stands in front of me, ramrod straight, face dragged into some semblance of rigidity, with only the glimmer of tears of fury giving away her real feelings.

I look around at the half dozen other people who have gone into suspended animation at my command. Cole was in the middle of a post-flight check, but now she stands motionless, her PADD in hand at her side. The boys who were unloading some ‘liberated’ equipment now stand with it floating on the anti-grav sled between them. Even Mama and Daddy have dropped their embrace and stand, guts sucked in, chests out, and chins back, side by side, so close their elbows are touching. The only ones not rigidly upright and perfectly still are Bert and Rae, who somehow find it amusing that so many people would obey my command. It just goes to show that no matter how old you are or what you accomplish, your siblings will always be there to keep you humble.

"I was talkin' to Lieutenant Cutler, here," I announce casually. "The rest of y'all, as you were."

I'm pleased to see Mama and Daddy go back to holding on to one another. As badly as I want to join them and be pulled into their embrace right now, I have _this_ to deal with firsthand after being parted from them for so long, this unexpected delay has really gotten me mad.

"I don't know where the hell you get off lightin' into me like that, _Lieutenant!_ " I snarl at her, emphasizing her rank so she knows this is a proper dressing down and not just her good buddy Trip getting pissed at her. "You might not be on Jupiter Station any more, but you're still in the Imperial Star Fleet, this is still a military installation, an' I am still your commandin' officer! I expect to be accorded the respect due my rank!"

"Yes, sir!"

"Likewise, Corporal Cole is a highly trained MACO whom I personally selected for this mission because I trust her to know her business an' follow orders. I will _not_ tolerate you speakin' of her as if she's some random punk hired off the street to provide muscle. Is that clear?"

"Y-yes, sir."

"Say that like you mean it, Lieutenant!"

"Yes, _sir!_ " she responds smartly, and whether she means it or not, I'm now sure she knows I do.

Liz is practically vibrating with tension and her face is all blotchy like she's about to turn on the waterworks – probably with sheer anger, but I'm too pissed off to let her get away with it. It's been years since I've seen my family in the flesh. She doesn't get to sour this reunion without paying for it. I'm not about to let her start crying and prevent me from getting my pound of flesh.

Leaning in close, I whisper, "Don't you fuckin' _dare_ start cryin'."

She bites her lip, swallows hard, and says, "No, sir." Normally she’d crumble at this kind of treatment, but for all she’s regained some sense of military discipline her eyes blaze at me, untamed.

Mad as I am about her pre-empting my reunion with my family, though, this isn't about that. What we're doing is _way_ too damned dangerous to allow such vocal and public dissent. If she gets away with pitching a fit now, when things are just starting out, there's no telling who might decide to do what when things get difficult and more dangerous. Those of us at the core of the mission – Miguel, Liz, and myself – need to keep our disagreements behind closed doors and present a united front to the rest of the team. And though everyone working here already knows more than enough about my operations to put me in front of a firing squad, we do _not_ need her shouting out stuff that’s classified even here. Sure, she didn’t actually say ‘General Reed’, but she said more than enough. Even the smallest pieces of a jigsaw make up part of a picture, and this is a picture we don’t want _anyone_ getting a glimpse of who doesn’t have to.

Beyond the success of the mission, I have to admit, at least to myself, that if her lack of discipline ever puts my family in more danger than they have already accepted by agreeing to help me out, there might just be enough of the Imperial officer in me to kill her where she stands. I might love her like a sister, so I'd feel bad about it afterward, but blood is still thicker than water.

"There is a time an' a place an' a correct way for you to air your grievances, Lieutenant," I remind her acidly and just loud enough for the others to hear. "It is not here an' now by shoutin' at me in front of other personnel!"

She's smart enough to keep her lip buttoned, so I can continue. I know she's upset and I understand why, so I can sympathize privately; but publicly, I cannot let her behavior go unaddressed.

"Corporal Cole, come here, please."

Amanda dutifully comes to stand beside me.

"Sir?"

"Lieutenant Cutler is gonna remain standin' right here, silently at attention, until you have completed your post-flight check an' unloaded your cargo. She will not leave this spot or change position until you verbally dismiss her."

I reckon Amanda has about twenty minutes’ worth of work yet to do. That should be plenty of time for Liz to simmer down. The fact that a Starfleet lieutenant outranks a MACO corporal by at least four or five pay grades should be enough humiliation for her to understand how angry and disappointed I am in her – though right now I’m not sure how much of a damn she gives even about that.

"You don't have to rush or dawdle, Corporal, but the Lieutenant will not leave until you dismiss her. Please be sure you do so before leavin'."

"Yes, sir."

"Go back to work, Cole."

"Yes, sir."

I turn back to Cutler. "Lieutenant, once you are dismissed, you will report directly to your quarters…"

Her eyes widen, horrified. "But Malc–”

"DID I GIVE YOU PERMISSION TO SPEAK?!"

Liz jumps when I shout in her face. Clearly, she wasn’t expecting that. "No, sir," she practically whispers.

"Then it would be wise not to," I tell her, my voice harsh.

She presses her lips together in a thin line. Her eyes drop.

"I would assume someone with the appropriate medical qualifications is currently attendin' your patient while you're here. Is that correct?"

"Yes, sir."

"Then you'll just have to trust his care to them for a little while longer. Once the corporal has dismissed you, you will go from here directly to your quarters. You will _not_ talk to anyone along the way, you will _not_ divert yourself to your patient's quarters or to the monitor console to check on him. In your quarters, you will sit on the bed, in the dark, an' wait for me. You will not lie down, you will not tidy the room, you will not pace. You will sit, silently, an' wait. Is that clear?"

"Yes, sir."

"All right, then," I say coolly, ignoring her slightly sullen tone. "We’ll finish this discussion later."

I turn away from her then, dropping her like a dirty shirt, and greet my family with a happy smile and open arms.

After a long group hug, the five of us Tuckers head out of the shuttle bay. As we make our way down to the kitchen, Bert and Rae and I talk and tease and goof around like we did when we were kids, and I can only imagine Mama and Daddy watch us indulgently from behind. In a big family, the kids tend to fall into cliques just like they do in school, and while we're all close, Bert, Rae, and I have a special bond the others don't share. The twins, Sam and Sarah, are a separate unit unto themselves, and Lizzie, rest her soul, was all mine and owned me completely.

Being just ten months apart, Bert and I were always at odds until Rae came along just before Bert turned three. We quit fighting so much when we realized everybody was paying more attention to the sweet baby girl who'd come to bless our family than the two screaming hellions who were always causing trouble, and joined forces in an attempt to overthrow our new queen. But Rae won us over by shoving fuzzy lollipops at us and saying, 'Share!' with a sticky grin and by climbing into our laps on the sofa to watch TV or have us read her a story and then falling asleep while sucking her thumb. She just loved us before she could even pronounce our names, expected us to love her back, and wouldn't take no for an answer. So it's easy and comfortable to fall back into the role of big brother, even though I haven't seen Bert in the flesh since he happened to be trying a case in San Francisco three years ago when I was at HQ for a briefing, and haven't spoken to Rae in person since the day I left home.

As we file into the kitchen, Mama starts giving orders. Bert and Rae are put to work helping with dinner while Daddy and I are allowed to set the table and then sit down and catch up. Just for tonight, the family is dining privately. Starting with the next meal, we'll eat with the rest of the bunker personnel in the dining room next door.

Daddy pours me two fingers of apple jack and a little more for himself – the Tucker equivalent of a cocktail – and, with Mama, Bert, and Rae piping in from time to time, catches me up on what the twins have been up to, how the extended family is doing, and what's up with the farm co-op he's been running for as long as I can remember. I’ve too many years to catch up on, hearing about everything that’s happened back home and seeing for myself how the family dynamics have changed as its members have grown up or grown older. I suppose half of me is wishing someone would tell me how Melissa’s getting on – Mama always keeps track of the neighborhood families’ doings and sayings – but the other half’s probably right in thinking it’s best for me not to know. Of course I hope she’s happy with Billy, but it’s not something I really need to hear in detail; vagueness is a heck of a lot less painful than concrete fact.

Naturally, they want to know about my life, and I give them a fairly heavily-edited version of how things went after I was shipped out. I skim over most of the bad parts and concentrate on making them laugh – now that I come to look, there are plenty of things that I can find the funny side of, more since I took charge of Jupiter Station, but even all the way back to training. I talk about the station, and of course there’s the explosion to discuss; thankfully they know I can’t go into detail about the technical side of it, but they love hearing me talk about actually meeting _and having discussions with_ powerful figures like the Fleet admirals and the members of the Triad, whom they only ever got to see on the television screens – not to mention being on practically first-name terms with Empress Sato herself.

We chat back and forth for a good thirty minutes while the kitchen fills with the smell of frying fish and stewing collards until finally, almost sheepishly, because I'm sure he doesn't want to interfere, but feels like he has to say something because he's concerned about my well-being and how it might be affected by what he sees as a lack of discipline, Daddy mentions the incident with Liz.

"I realize I'm probably givin' advice where it's neither needed nor wanted," he acknowledges, and I humor him as he proceeds to give it anyway. "But I don't see how you can let her get away with mouthin' off like that an' not have it come back to bite you in the ass later, son. You need to deal with that girl hard an' fast."

Mama's never been one to keep quiet when she has a dissenting opinion, so Daddy's hardly finished talking when she chimes in.

“I’ve been in the military myself, as you know, Trip,” she says, leaning back against the sideboard and crossing her arms. Then she directs a stern look at Daddy when he opens his mouth. “So nobody needs to give me the talk about the value of discipline, thank you very much."

Daddy buttons up and lets her keep talking. He's never been a hen-pecked husband and nobody'd ever dare tease him that Mama wears the pants in the family, but they've both learned over more than forty years of marriage how to argue properly and really hear what the other one is saying. Daddy knows Mama will listen, when she's finished making her point.

"But I’ve got eyes in my head," Mama continues. "An' it seemed to me that young woman was just about at the end of her rope."

She looks back at me and says, “I know there’s a lot you can’t tell us an' I’m not askin' for more. But I’m guessin' Lieutenant Cutler is very afraid for someone – someone she cares deeply about, in more than just a medical sense.”

"Doesn't matter, Elaine," Daddy cuts in before I can respond. "You know as well as I do, if he doesn't do somethin' about that girl's mouth, he's gonna lose the respect of everyone who sees or even hears about her gettin' away with it. They might never _say_ a word to him, but he'll see it in their work an' behavior. If ever there was a place where the sayin' about one bad apple is true, it's in the military."

They've learned how to argue with each other all right, but it looks like they've forgotten all about me. At seventeen, I'd have sat respectfully and listened to the adults talking about discipline, not speaking until I was spoken to. But I'm just over a couple of decades past seventeen, now, and the only one in the room with actual military _command_ experience. So when Rae catches my eye and throws me a wink, I don't hesitate to break in to the discussion.

"Daddy!"

My voice is a bit sharper than I meant it to be, betraying some of the exasperation I'm feeling with being steamrolled by the two of them. While he doesn't say anything, the look my father cuts me when he hears it says as plainly as any words he might use that it's no way for me to talk to my elders.

I take a breath, and apologize.

"I'm sorry," I tell him, and include Mama in my glance. "I didn't mean to snap like that." Adding a smile to take any sting or note of disrespect out of my words, I continue, "But if the two of you will let me get a word in edgewise, I think you'll both understand an' approve what I did out there."

Daddy looks to Mama, who just shrugs. So he shrugs back at her, folds his arms across his chest, and sits back in his chair.

"We're listenin'."

I rub my hand wearily across my forehead and try to think how to begin. For some reason, the first thing I want them to understand is that Liz's behavior today was not at all usual for her.

"First off, Daddy, I know you were shocked by the way Cutler popped off at me. You just gotta believe me when I tell you, the strain that woman’s been under for the past year would have felled a steer. I know exactly why she did what she did, an' the part of me that's her friend understands an' doesn't really mind at all. That doesn’t mean the part of me that's her CO will tolerate insubordination, though, no matter what the reason.

"Secondly, I actually run a really tight ship, but y'all have to understand that Jupiter Station isn't like anything else in the Imperial military machine, an' it took me years to make it that way. I started small, by just mindin' my manners an' treatin' people the way I'd like to be treated. All I did was behave the way you taught me, but from the way people reacted to a little _please_ an' _thank you_ at first, you'd have thought I was speakin' Vulcan.

"When I was promoted to Head of Construction, I threw in a word of praise every now an' then, an' I'm tellin' you, people who've never heard the words 'good job' or 'well done' in reference to their work appreciate that as much as a _cash bonus_. Productivity and efficiency went through the roof, an' before I knew it, I was in charge of the whole station.

"Now, Mama, I know I gave Liz a hard time," I admit. “But fact is, she’s a lieutenant an’ I’m a commodore, an' any other CO in the fleet would have bloodied her mouth just for a start."

I look at Daddy then, and tell him, "The technology might be better than it was in your day, Daddy, but the punishment is no less brutal. Instead of transporter drills, we have somethin' called the agony booth. It stimulates the pain receptors all over your body, or it can target one particular part. It can make you feel like you're bein' doused in boilin' oil or dunked in an ice bath, like you're bein' cut open, set on fire, crushed to death, beaten, burned alive, an' even kicked in the family jewels, one after another or all at once. Since it targets the nerves directly, you can't become numb to the pain, an' since it does no physical damage, they can leave you in it for as long as they want."

I elect not to inform them at the moment that it was the man we're all here to help who created the infernal machine or that Jon Archer once left me in one for four hours on his say-so.

"There are three agony booths on Jupiter Station. My head of security runs a weekly diagnostic on them. A couple times a year, he might even have to put somebody from a visitin' ship in one if they're caught doin' somethin' on the station that has the agony booth as its specified punishment. I can't do anything about the people not under my command, but I've never once had to use one on my own personnel."

"Perhaps if you did, just once in a while…"

"No, sir," I interrupt, which, the last time we sat at a kitchen table together would not have been tolerated, but I do it respectfully, so I get away with it. "At this point, if I were to use one of those damned contraptions on my own people, it would be nothin' more than a violation of trust. I told you I've tried to treat people the way you taught me, an' it's paid off. They value my good opinion of them an' want to please me. It's enough for my people to know they've disappointed me or made me mad. For most of them, no corporal punishment could be as bad as a disapprovin' look or an angry word from me. One of my guys, probably my closest friend, Mike Rostov has even said he’d _rather_ have me hit him than chew him out when he screws up, so I'm just glad he doesn't screw up often.”

Mama's not convinced, and while Daddy might tolerate a respectful interruption when he's talking to me man-to-man, he won't put up with any such thing towards Mama. So when she looks at me over her crossed arms and starts talking, I shut up and listen. 

“I’m well aware of the responsibilities you feel as a military commander, Trip. But maybe you should remember you were an engineer long before you were a soldier, an’ the first thing an engineer does when a component fails short of its specs is check its history. You can’t expect a piece of duranium that’s riddled with stress fractures to perform like one straight out of the foundry.”

Mama always knew what weapons to use, and the analogy is completely apt. I know my smile in return is wry, conceding the point.

“Mama, you should be in charge of the weapons division. 

"Look, I get what you're sayin', but Liz an' I have been friends, good friends, for a long time – an’ we probably still are, in spite of what happened out there. She has more access to me than just about anyone except my department heads an' my personal assistant. She knows I will always make time to talk things out with her, but she was mad an' didn't want to wait.

“An' I know she’s had a hell of a life the past few years. I’m doin’ the best I can for everybody, but right then an' there, I didn't have time to fine-tune the process specifically for her. She’ll just have to live with the fact that I’m no saint, never claimed to be – an' what I _am_ is her commandin’ officer. She may have her sights glued on one man, but I’ve got to think of thousands, all dependin’ on me an’ the decisions I make. Sometimes takin’ even a few seconds to make one person’s life easier can mean total disaster for everyone. An’ today was one of those days.”

She’s still not looking all that reassured, so I cross the kitchen and give her a hug. “Trust me, Mama, Liz an’ I will work it out between us. For what it’s worth, I’ve already let her get away with slappin’ me, but there’s a line, an' she crossed it today.”

Daddy's snort sounds more amused than disapproving at the idea of little bitty Liz Cutler walloping me, so I throw him a wink. Mama looks up at me from the circle of my arms. “I've always trusted you, Trip. I’m just … relieved to know you realize that the rank pips don’t always have to stop you bein’ human.”

* * *

**Chapter Ten**

**Bottom Line**

_Commodore Charles Tucker III_

I’m not going to cut short the time I spend with my family. By the time the last biscuit is gone, the dishes are done, and we've swapped a few more stories, more than four hours have passed, but as soon as the reunion breaks up naturally I poke around in the fridge and fix Liz a plate. I may have told Mama and Daddy we're friends, but it still surprises me to discover that we're close enough for me to know that she’d prefer reheated pasta to Mama's pan-fried catfish and collard greens.

Sure enough, when I enter her quarters, she’s sitting there exactly as ordered, on the bed, in the dark. She blinks when I switch the light on, even on one-third power to let her eyes adjust a bit.

“Thought you might be hungry, Lieutenant,” I greet her.

“No, Sir.” She stares straight ahead, sulking.

“You’re not hungry, or you’re not gonna eat the food because I brought it an’ you’re still mad at me?”

“I’m not hungry, Sir.”

One-handed, balancing the tray and its contents with the other, I twirl a chair from beneath her desk, position it in front of her and place the tray on it. Her gaze stays stonily on the far wall.

She hasn’t eaten since breakfast and she doesn’t normally eat a lot then. Admittedly she’s not one of the big hitters when it comes to eating – Amanda would starve to death in a week on what Liz puts away – but she needs food like anyone else does, and I’m practically certain I hear a dismal, rebellious grumble from the region of her belly when she catches a whiff of the rich smell of spaghetti Bolognese.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I say mildly. “’Cause you have exactly fifteen minutes to get this dinner down you or you’ll be confined to quarters for a week.”

I hadn’t thought it was possible for her mouth to get any tighter, but it manages. She picks up the knife and fork and uses them to slice – almost rip – the spaghetti into tiny pieces, and then she throws the cutlery down on the tray and starts eating the mess with her dessert spoon. I’ve bought her a bowl of ice cream, too, but it doesn’t take too much imagination to work out that she’s more likely to throw it at me than eat it.

When she’s well started on ramming the food into her mouth, I take a seat opposite her. “Look, Lieutenant, I’m fully aware you’ve had a rough time lately,” I tell her, still keeping my voice even. “But fact is, you’re a junior officer an' a professional, an' I need you to keep a hold of yourself.

“Yeah, it must have been hard on you bein’ transported an’ I’m guessin’ that with it comin’ on top of Malcolm bein’ in labor that wasn’t the easiest thing to handle.”

“Permission to speak – Sir!” she almost spits at me.

“You can say your piece in just a minute, Lieutenant, I’m not done yet. Keep eatin'.

“I’m hopin’ that the time you’ve spent here has enabled you to think over your conduct in the shuttle bay. Corporal Cole is a fine officer an' a good friend of mine, an' whatever she did an' made you do, it was on my specific orders. So if you want to blame anyone for makin’ you put Reed’s life in danger all over again, you blame me. An’ when you’re done blamin’ me, you should offer her an apology.”

“If you order me to apologize to her, Sir, then I will.” Icicles drip off the words, and I'll be damned if she doesn't make that 'Sir' sound like a ‘sonofabitch’ every time she says it.

“Nope. I’m not orderin’ you. I’m gonna leave it to your own good sense an’ your own sense of fairness, an’ I’m sure that sooner or later you’ll admit even to yourself that you were in the wrong.”

I lean forward. “Let me make one thing plain. I _had_ planned to kill ‘em all, take the lot out in one big bang, until one tiny thing happened that made me change my mind. But don’t ever think I don’t know what a risk I’ve taken, what a risk I’m _still_ takin’, by keepin’ Reed alive. As weak as he is right now, he’s still a vindictive, murderin’ son of a bitch, an' until or unless I can find some way through to him I have to have a means of controllin’ him, makin’ sure he can’t take his revenge against me an' a whole lot of other innocent people – maybe even _you_.”

She opens her mouth to say he wouldn’t harm her, but even carried away on the tide of her own protective indignation that’s a lie too far. She shuts it and glowers at me.

“So _until_ or _unless_ that happens,” I continue, “I am gonna make sure that everybody around him, _includin’ you_ , acts as the professional they are. Because you know as well as I do that one slip in our defenses an’ he’ll be in there causin’ as much murder an’ mayhem as he possibly can, an’ I’m not goin’ to allow that to happen. _Anyone_ who can't join me in presentin' a united front to that man is a threat to this operation, an' they'll be out of here faster than they can say goodbye. An’ if I can't trust them to keep their mouths shut about what we're doin' here, there's no tellin' where they'll end up.

“Bottom line is, from now on you behave like an Imperial Fleet officer. Give Reed all the care he needs, he’ll probably wake up sometime soon an’ then the work will really start. But one more public outburst like that one in the shuttle bay an’ I’ll have you transferred. I can’t risk havin’ a loose cannon on board. Is that clear?”

I hold her eyes so she knows I really mean what I say. And I feel like a heel for disciplining her like this, but there’s far too much riding on this to allow anyone to step out of line, however upset they may be. Literally, lives are at stake, and we’re going to have the fight of our lives if we’re going to pull off the insane gamble I’ve chosen to take.

If she chooses to play ball, she can stay and look after the starved hell-cat we’ve got imprisoned in the Bunker. If she doesn’t, she can go, and possibly never set eyes on him again except on a TV screen. As much of a bastard as it makes me, I know I can send her away and she'll keep quiet because if anyone finds out where Reed is right now, he's as good as dead, and she won’t risk that.

“Is that clear?” I repeat, when the thunderous silence has gone on a couple of seconds too long.

She’s dropped her eyes, but at that she lifts them again, and I know I’ve won. And I wonder all over again what the hell it is that makes her so desperate to stay with General Disaster, especially now he’s fallen from such a height that if it was a mountain he wouldn’t have a bone left intact in his body.

“Yes, Sir.”

I nod, and leave the room. I feel like I've just drowned a kitten, but I can’t let that stop me. I’m that guy in the old saying, ‘He who rides a tiger dares not dismount’; too many other people will pay the price if I get this wrong, and I just have to hope that sooner or later, when Liz has had time to cool down, she’ll realize I’m only doing what I have to.

For _all_ our sakes.


	3. 11-15

**Chapter Eleven**

**Awakening**

_General Malcolm Reed_

I don’t awaken so much as drift slowly to the surface of my consciousness. This is a very good thing, for if I’d woken abruptly to the stark horror of still living, I might have done something rash and ill-considered such as screaming in horror before I had time to assess my situation. Even so, when the lassitude dribbles away and I become fully alert, it takes a significant act of will to remain still and lax, quiet, and calm.

 _Calm?_ Who am I kidding? The coolant explosion should have killed me. I was sitting on the fucking trigger for Lucifer's sake! I should have been annihilated, burnt to a cinder if not blown apart. The fact that I’m alive and…in only moderate pain, I realise, can mean only one of two things. Either I’ve been horribly burned and terribly disfigured, all of my skin seared away in the initial flashover, along with the pain receptors that make mild to moderate burns hurt so badly; or my neck has been broken at the C1 or C2 vertebra, damaging the spinal cord and leaving me completely paralyzed, incontinent, unable to breathe without assistance, and numb to my injuries.

I struggle to think of ways to test my hypotheses. It would be helpful to know as much as possible about my condition before anyone discovers I’m conscious. I should have paid more attention to Phlox when we were building the Agony Booth.

_Why am I alive?_

The question erupts, and bloody hell! My mind is in turmoil, my heart suddenly racing, my pulse thrumming in my ears. I fight not to pursue answers. It doesn't matter. I don’t need to know, not right now, not any more than I did the day I was born. It really doesn't matter why. The fact is that _I am_ , and what I really do need to know now is my condition, my position, my location, any possible escape routes, and how I can protect myself. Ideally, I should strive to discover all of this before anyone realizes I’m conscious enough to consider it. ‘Why’ doesn't matter.

At least, not yet. Though the time will come when it will be the most important question of all.

Right then. Focus.

Good.

Am I burned? How can I tell?

Burn victims. I’ve seen them in sickbay, back on _Enterprise_ , swathed in bandages, coated in healing gels and unctuous goo. They were kept in hyperbaric chambers which maintained a constant flow of warm, moist, highly oxygenated air. I take a slow, deep, silent breath, tasting the air. It’s dank, cool, and musty. Subterranean?

If I have been badly burned, no one is trying to heal me. I’ve been brought here to die.

Oh, the delicious irony. I can _live_ with that.

 _Why am I alive?_ Whether I want it to or not, the question explodes again in my mind, battering for answers.

My memory of the last scene from ‘before’ is crystal clear. I was going to die. I’d accepted that, as far as anyone can; almost, after what I’d lived through, welcomed it. Of all the ridiculous fucking things to die for, I was going to die for a dream.

_… Em's mouth, lips red and moist, drawing into a little round 'O' as if she was getting ready to blow me a kiss …_

My mind skitters away from the memory. It brings with it all the pain of labour, and something more, deeper, worse.

_… I kicked back at the panel beneath me, and …_

And there _must_ have been an explosion. I remember the impact of my bare heel on cold metal. Whatever else Tucker may be, he’s quite capable of setting up a booby trap; the microswitch had been re-routed to somehow introduce a small stream of odourless, colourless and highly volatile coolant gas normally kept extremely carefully contained under the flooring, and the spark across the open contacts produced when I kicked the panel would have ignited it, at a guess setting off a chain reaction that would have effectively disposed of the lab and everyone in it.

So. If it worked – and failing evidence the contrary I’m presuming it did – everyone in there was killed. Everyone except me, that is. As far as I know.

Tucker, rot and blast him, must have decided that I was more use to him alive than dead. Since I evidently _am_ still alive, as opposed to the cloud of atoms I presumably would be if I’d been left on that bio-bed when the coolant ignited, nothing else could possibly account for me being here (wherever ‘here’ may be) rather than secured in Sickbay, ready for next use when required.

So, how? And for god’s sake, _why?_

It. Does. Not. Matter.

It’s easier this time to push the question away. The slow, deep, silent breath that told me I either haven’t been burned or am being allowed to die from my burns told me something else: I’m not paralysed. At least, not entirely. I can control my own breathing – it’s not being done for me by a machine. Exit the theory that I’ve a broken neck. 

That discovery is not as pleasant as it might have been, for now, I’m literally itching to test my muscles, to see what else I can do. This is information on which my continued survival may depend. I can only hope I’m not trembling with the effort to be still, for I daren’t open my eyes to be sure yet. There is a sensation of twitching, and I can feel insects crawling just beneath my skin. In my mind's eye, there’s the vision of a hole opening in my palm and ants swarming out like in that old surrealist film _Un Chien Anadlou_ , and I wonder suddenly why I’ve never had the urge to slice someone's eyeball with a straight razor.

Though that was possibly one of the few places.... A memory slides into view that I thrust aside. A traitor's death. A body, glossy with blood running from so many cuts I’d programmed a computer to keep track of them so I could concentrate on the precise actions of the blade in my hand. Still alive, because the nervous system was still functioning; he still twitched, though long before the end his throat was scraped so raw that nothing but a hoarse hiss emerged with every incision. I’m sure it was an accomplishment at the time, and hopefully more than one would-be rebel would have seen it and taken warning, but right now it’s not something I need to be concentrating on.

_Why am I alive?_

It. Does. Not. Matter.

I hear a voice, male and somehow familiar, but too low and soft for me to make out the words or identify the source. I just know for certain now that I am not alone here, wherever ‘here’ is, and that the speaker is someone I know.

The female who answers is not so quiet, or rather, her voice (being lighter and higher pitched) carries better. "As well as can be expected," she says.

I listen, so tense I almost have to remember to breathe. My brain reaches desperately for information, struggles to make connections that should be simple. It feels broken, and the pieces are glittering shards of black glass that will cut my fingers to the bone if I slip when I’m trying to piece it back together.

The man murmurs again, and she replies, "Died just after it was born. Multiple critical defects." 

I want to weep with relief. At least, I think it’s relief; though the emotion is so complex that I can’t even begin to break down its finer shades. They can only be talking about Damien.

"At least that's what Doctor Salazar's report will say," she adds.

The man's voice takes on a stern tone, and she says, "The child survived the transport, but not in any condition in which a sentient being would choose to live."

The male speaks again, and I recognise the rising intonation of a question.

"He wasn't…well, entirely human." I don't think I have ever heard anyone sound so uncomfortable without screaming. "The transporter identified him as a parasite and tried to filter him out. It was all the corporal could do to convince the biofilter that he was a separate being … Then the transporter refused to accept the alien DNA as native to him … The corporal couldn't quite get his molecules to … reassemble themselves in the proper order."

Why, I wonder, didn't they just let the bloody transporter do what it wanted? I would have been more than happy to let my little demon seed become so much space dust.

Apparently the man has asked a similar question, because the woman answers mine.

"Considering the amount of blood flow to the womb, since she didn't know if the transporter would cauterize the vessels, she thought it best not to risk it," she explains. "For all she knew, it would just rip the organ out, leave the orifice open, and he'd bleed out before we could get him off the transporter pad."

Bollocks. So now what? I'm supposed to be grateful to still have the spare parts from a different model that have been jury-rigged into me because without them I'd be dead?

I was _ready_ for death.

The man has asked another question.

"It was humanely euthanized with chemicals that will make it look like Phlox simply botched his calculations. The only other choice was to let it die slowly and in pain. We have none of the necessary equipment or medications to treat it, and frankly, there wasn't much more they could have done in a proper medical facility, either. Doctor Salazar will never know the difference."

The man makes a sound that carries both approval and a subtle threat. I'm guessing the mysterious Doctor Salazar best not _ever_ know the difference, or this young woman – her voice, I realize, sounds young, feeding me more information that will help me identify her – will regret it.

"Difficult to say, sir. I'd have to physically examine him," she answers, and when the male grumbles again, she continues, "Our scanners are outdated. They don't have the resolution you'd find in an Imperial facility, so without visual confirmation, I can't be sure." Another rumble, and she replies, "Yes, sir."

I hear light footfalls, smell the scent of a woman, and feel gooseflesh rise as the cool air kisses my skin when she pulls back the blanket I only now realize was covering me. Bloody hell! If I’d known I was shielded by a blanket, I could have tested my muscles a bit.

Something heavy and metallic lumbers across the floor, stopping close beside me. If it was possible for me to tense any further, I’d do it. Sound effects like those _never_ mean anything good.

I hear equipment clattering and rattling, the snap of gloves being donned, and then something hard and cold is thrust inside me, into that alien orifice at the base of my belly. I’m helpless to stifle the undignified yelp of surprise that erupts from my throat, nor can I overcome the instinctive urge to withdraw from the intrusive instrument. That’s how I discover I’m strapped to the bloody bed again!

I feel my still-sore tissues stretched as the speculum opens inside me, and there’s a sharp pain as something’s passed through what’s presumably my cervix. A hand presses down on my abdomen; it doesn't hurt, but my adrenaline ratchets up a notch as I feel the inexplicable urge to urinate. I realise I haven't opened my eyes yet, but when I try, I discover they’re taped shut. When I feel a cloth rubbing against my brows as I try desperately to prise my lids open against the tape, the first bitter taste of fear touches the back of my throat. I’ve been blindfolded.

I strain against my bonds once more, and the utter futility of it is nearly overwhelming. I'm blind and bound and somebody is messing about with my genitals again (I suppose since the organ in question is sited in my body it technically _is_ ‘mine’ now, whoever – or whatever – possessed it to begin with), and I'm helpless to do anything about it. It feels so long since I had the power to resist _anything_ that I feel as though I’m fit to burst with frustration and rage.

_Why am I alive?_

I want to weep when the question comes back to haunt me. _Why now?_ I'm panting like a fucking dog, I realise, hyperventilating, just on the razor's edge of panic. Then, as if I hadn’t suffered enough indignities, a cool, slick digit slides up my arsehole without warning, and once again my body strains to get away from it without waiting for orders from my brain. I feel nauseous and I want – I _need­_ – to scream, but I press my lips into a tight line and hold them there with my teeth clamped on the lower one. The finger wiggles and prods inside my arse, my body responds though there is no desire, and I taste blood as the sob that boils up in my chest is stifled into a long, low, agonized moan that I can’t keep in no matter how hard I try.

The finger is withdrawn. I grunt softly at the pinching sensation as whatever-it-is slides back out through my cervix. The speculum is closed and removed; I feel suddenly empty, but it's no relief. What's done is done, and now my entire body, especially my groin, is thrusting and throbbing in unwilling response to a stimulus that was unwanted, unwelcome, and is no longer there. And there's no chance of release in sight.

This would normally be the point at which any local humorist indulges himself at my expense, and I brace myself for the jokes. I’m not sure whether I’m relieved or alarmed that none follow.

I shiver with a chill that goes far deeper than the chill of this room could ever reach, and wish that I could curl into a ball like any animal shielding its vulnerable underbelly from attack; protecting, too, both my fear and humiliation and my unwanted, aching erection. I want to laugh when the blanket is pulled back over me – as if it could do any good against a cold that comes from the inside out! – but I remain resolutely silent as I fight to slow my breathing. I know I'm not in a real medical facility from the female's earlier comments about the scanners and why they euthanised the sprog. I also know coma patients respond to noxious stimuli. When we were working on the agony booth, Phlox once used a moribund crewman to show me how the body can respond to pain even when the conscious mind does not register the sensation. The reactions he produced in Ensign Fuller might not have been as spectacular as my recent response, but then, he hadn't been performing a surprise gynaecological exam on an unwilling, recently altered, post-partum human male, either. Maybe, if I keep very still and control my breathing, and nobody was watching my face, they’ll think I’m still comatose.

"You can quit playin' possum now, Reed," says that hated laconic Floridian accent, and the jolt of adrenaline is like a shot of electricity straight into my fractured mind. "We may not have bio-beds here, but we do have an electroencephal­ogram. We knew you were wakin' up fifteen minutes before _you_ did."

"Fucking bastard," I breathe.

I hear a dry chuckle, and the abyss of despair opens; I’ve been rescued from one hell only to be thrown into another. Unable to hold myself together any longer, I howl my fear and frustration and my abject humiliation into the darkness.

* * *

**Chapter Twelve**

**Breaking the Ice**

_Commodore Charles Tucker III_

Reed's a peculiar little perv, and yes, I realize that's rich, coming from me, especially considering who I used to fuck and how many different ways I liked to fuck (and fuck _with_ ) her; and although that last bit seems to have lost its appeal recently, if she's grown so accustomed to my presence over the past few years that she prefers sharing a bed with me to leaving me to sleep on the sofa, maybe she'll still be willing to let me fuck her, though I haven't asked yet and she hasn't offered. Still, for a man who's been reported to enjoy a blow-job on the bridge, snatch a quickie in the turbo-lift, and take an ensign by surprise from behind in a secondary access tube (though given the confined space, I consider that little more than a tall tale even though Reed isn't a very big guy and some of the women on _Enterprise_ were slightly built), he sure freaked out over a simple medical exam.

Of course, he _has_ just given birth, and being the oldest in my family, I can remember Mama being a little sensitive every time she had another kid. Then, too, when I think about what Phlox must have done to him, all the drugs and the tubes and that pool of pink goo, I don't suppose I'd want anybody touching me between the waist and the knees afterwards, either.

And Cutler did kind of spring it on him. She can be a _little_ bit thoughtless every now and then, and some of me suspects she was so overwhelmed by the responsibility of giving him his first post-delivery internal that she sort of forgot the polite end of things like warning him first. I'll have to have a word with her about that, though I’m guessing that normally she’d never be so unprofessional to any patient, let alone this one. Not that I have any pity for Reed, he's a vicious little bastard. Always has been. But if things are going to change, they have to change in the small ways first. It's the small things that get to us every goddamn day, and no sweeping reform is ever going to take root if small changes don't prepare the ground for it.

So, do I feel like a hypocrite when I slap him like a bitch and order him to 'Stop that!'? Yeah, kind of, but it works; he snaps back into silence, so rigid that you almost get the feeling that he’d shatter if anything touched him. And we weren't going to accomplish anything with him baying like a hound dog chained to the fence while he watches a fox sneaking into the chicken coop, either. Though there was something about his face when he did it … something not quite human … it freaked me out more than I cared to admit, and I dismiss it from my mind with an effort. We’ve enough going on here right now without borrowing more trouble on top of it.

Liz shows me the images from her fiber-optic camera. Part of me wants to tell her I don't really need to see – I don't deal all that well with blood and gore, not that I would admit that to anyone – but I’ve been around long enough to know that if you respect a professional by letting them show off their skill and training just a little, they're a whole lot more willing to help you next time you ask a favor. I think Major Malfunction – _He's been promoted over the years, too,_ I remind myself, _It's General Chaos now –_ and his head might explode if he knew how many people were loyal to me just because I showed them a little appreciation.

And that, I remind myself with admittedly smug pride, was something I understood even before we had access to the logs and database from the _Defiant_.

"You see this area still weeping blood?" Liz asks. We're having this conversation at the bedside for Reed's benefit; I hope the little asshole appreciates it. I glance at the screen long enough for her to see me looking but don't really let my eyes focus and I nod. It's just a big, wet, red disk as far as I can tell, but, knowing what it's wet with, well, yeah, I'm squeamish. So what? I usually deal with sick engines, not violated bodies. "That's where the placenta was attached. Also, I should note that the uterus seems oddly shaped. It's hard to be sure right now due to the distension, but I think it might be somewhat bifurcated. If I'm right, that deformity might change the timeline of what I'm about to tell you, but the principles remains the same. We shouldn’t disturb it until it's stopped bleeding for twenty-four hours or we risk triggering a fatal hemorrhage," she says. "Now, for most _women_ , the bleeding stops in eight to ten days. It's been a week, so, assuming the hormone balance is correct, we _could_ remove it sometime within the next three days."

"Assumin' the hormone balance is correct?" I press her. "I thought you said you downloaded all of Phlox's research."

"Yes, sir, we did," she's quick to reply. "But this is the first time a human male has taken a baby to full term, and…well…It wasn't quite a _human_ baby."

I glance over at Reed. His lips are compressed into a taut white line and a muscle in his jaw is fluttering. I don't really feel sorry for him, because, knowing the things he's done, well, what was done _to_ him was, in some ways … Actually, no, there _are_ fates worse than death. I decided that the day I rigged that explosion with a five-second triggering delay, and he decided it for himself the moment he kicked the panel in to trigger it. Still, knowing he had earned some pretty nasty karma doesn't make what they did to him any less horrific, and I guess hearing other people talk about it doesn’t make it any easier to bear. Back on _Enterprise_ barely anyone knew anything about him other than that he presumably had parents, so he’s not the kind of guy who makes his personal details public knowledge at the best of times. He's not going to tell us our talking about it upsets him, and I don't think he'd appreciate me telling him I'd noticed.

"Hear that, General?" I call to him cheerfully. "In the next two or three days…"

"Actually, if I may, Commodore," Cutler interrupts.

"What?" I scowl at her, and snap where Reed would have, I don't know, raped her? No, she's talking out of turn. He'd have made her go down on him and made some snarky comment about how it wouldn't be polite to talk with her mouth full.

She stammers a bit at first – that ticking-off I gave her out on the landing pad has made her a bit wary of getting across me –but she's a brave girl, even if I am acting like a bear with a sore head because this whole thing is a colossal gamble and now and again I remember I’m risking everyone here by taking it. She must be pretty confident that she has information I would want to know, because she's still talking.

"Th-the General will b-be here a couple of months at least," she explains, "for physiotherapy, so he can regain his strength, get back to eating solid food, and so forth.” Now she’s on ground she feels confident with, her slight stammer disappears, sped on its way by my encouraging nod; after all, she’s only doing what we agreed on, taking charge of the man’s recovery, and I ought to give her opinions the appropriate respect. “Since he's going to be here anyway, if we can wait two to four weeks, we can remove it laparoscopically rather than with conventional surgery, cutting the recovery time by up to eighty-three percent, or more."

"Raw numbers, Liz," I demand. "What's the differential?"

She's been with me long enough now to understand my engineering terms, and answers without hesitation. "A week to ten days versus six to eight weeks. Again, assuming the hormone balance is correct, and adjusting for any potential complications if the organ is defective."

"And the risks?"

"Go down the longer we wait, until it gets to its final size, post-partum size," she says. "Once more, that is assuming the hormone balance is correct. But respectfully, Commodore, I think the decision of _what_ we do and _when_ should be up to him."

I have to admit, I'm proud of her. After Reed hitched his wagon to a rising star and left her behind, a sorry, shattered shell of a person, Liz just attached herself to me as her unwilling protector and confidant. I wasn't always as kind and patient as I should have been, and I tried to avoid knowing when she was in trouble so I wouldn't have to be protective; but I listened when she rambled on how the whole world was damaged and we were all sick, and tried to give her good advice when she had problems. Somehow, whether because of or despite my determined efforts _not_ to get involved any more than I had to, she’s grown to be a much stronger, happier, better person than I will ever be.

I would never have imagined that Malcolm might have some opinion on how his medical care should proceed – or, if he did, why anyone should give a damn. After everything he did to her, no one would so much as blink if Liz used her position as his caregiver to torture him, physically and mentally, but the idea that such a thing would be possible doesn’t even seem to have occurred to her. Reed's just a patient who needs her help. As far as I can tell, she doesn't even _see_ the monster who used her up and discarded her like an empty husk. Honestly, I don't know if she's really still just a sad little psycho who's too stupid and scared to take advantage of the opportunity for revenge, or if she's some kind of phoenix, reborn better and stronger than she was in the beginning. What I _do_ know is that she's a much better human being than most folks you're likely to meet in the Imperial Fleet.

I nod. "I agree," I tell her, "so long as circumstances allow it an' we know he's able to understand, we'll leave that decision to him." Looking at the figure strapped to the bed, I say again, "Hear that, General? In the next week or so, you'll have to start thinkin' about _if_ an' _when_ an' _how_ you want your hysterectomy."

I can't say for sure because of the bandage, but I'd bet my eye teeth he's rolling his eyes. One thing I can say for certain is that he flushes bright red when he realizes exactly what I've said. The whole transplant thing must have been such an utter humiliation for him, he can probably hardly bear to think about it himself, let alone have other people kidding him on the subject. And I don't know why, but mocking him about it isn't quite as entertaining as I thought it would be.

I move to the environmental controls on the wall panel and reduce the lighting to ten percent. Then I return to the bedside. Looking down at Reed, I decide on a whim to call him by name.

"Malcolm," I say, and he starts visibly. I wonder how long it's been since he's heard the sound of his own name coming from another's lips, and then it occurs to me that the last person to use it was probably one of the ones who turned him into a human incubator. Obviously if that’s the case it’ll have some real bad associations, but it’s his name and I’m going to use it – maybe some good associations will help him deal with the bad ones. "I'm gonna sit down on the bed beside you. I'm not gonna do anythin' to hurt you. I'm just sittin' down."

I take my seat, and hear the metal links of the restraints chink slightly as he tenses even further. I can't really blame him. It's not like I don't have reason to beat the living hell out of him, but I've already decided I'm not going to. As long as he gives me no new reason to come at him, I’ve decided to let bygones be bygones, but I'll tell him that later.

"Would you like to sit up?" I ask, and I see him squirm as much as his physical condition and the restraints will allow. Jesus Christ, he wants to run away from me!

Just that in itself tells me more than I really want to know about how beaten down he is; whatever else he may have been, he was never a runner. Eventually he nods warily, and I press the button that raises the head of the bed. I can feel Cutler's eyes boring into the back of my head as I release the restraints at his wrists, but he's weak as a kitten; he _might_ be able to pull the trigger on a phase pistol, just about, if somebody held it in his hand and aimed it for him. I turn where I sit and release his ankles and knees before I turn back to face him.

"I'm leavin' the straps 'round your chest an' hips," I tell him. "I'm told you've been havin' nightmares, an' you might have enough strength left in your core to roll yourself out of bed. We don’t want you hurtin’ yourself."

Even with his eyes covered, the confused look on his face is priceless. The puzzled frown is sunk so deep between his brows it’s enough to give me a headache just looking at it. I almost wish I had a camera.

"Now, I'm just gonna sit here a minute or two, give you a chance to relax," I say. He doesn't move. Doesn't acknowledge me. He doesn't need to. I can tell I've scared the shit out of him. He hears what I say and isn’t buying a word of it – he’s just waiting for me to start hitting him.

I tamed a feral cat once, about a million years ago, when I was still a kid. I suppose I should say I _mostly_ tamed him. He wouldn't use the litter box. Daddy eventually installed a cat flap because old Axel would sit at the door for hours on end, yowling in agony, or find an open window and shred a hole through the screen, but he wouldn't shit in the house.

Cats are different than dogs. They're not pack animals. They don't recognize an alpha male (and the thought of Alpha gives me a chill even now. I don't think I'll ever forget those freaky blue eyes). They don't accept dominance – at least, not from humans. They respond to kindness, gentleness, and food, but if you ever hurt a cat, that's it; you've lost its trust and turned it into a fucking whore. If it ever shows you any kind of sweetness or affection again, it's purely self-serving. You're the bringer of food, the supplier of shelter, the giver of warmth, and that's it. It'll do what it takes to get what it wants from you, but it'll never trust you or love you, ever again.

My mistake with Axel was kicking him in the ass one day when he was doing that serpentine walk that cats do, blocking my path down the hallway to the bathroom. I was down with the flu and desperate to get to the toilet so I could barf. I could have just nudged him aside or picked him up and dropped him behind me, but I was feeling like death and it pissed me off that he would delay me when I was so obviously sick. So I kicked him, hard enough to lift him off all four feet. He yowled and got out of my way, I got to the toilet in time to puke, and then, feeling bad for what I’d done, I went and found Axel to give him a cuddle by way of apology. He let me hold him and pet him, but he was tense and stiff in my arms. And he never forgave me. He still slept in my bed and curled up in my lap, but only on _his_ terms. Never again did he just melt in my arms when I'd pick him up in a random moment of affection.

Reed is more of a pit-bull. After what’s been done to him by the last guy who earned his submission, I doubt if he’ll ever bow to anyone, ever again. And what he's been through aside, he'd _never_ accept me as his alpha. I just don't have what it takes, and I'm not ashamed to admit that. Still, like cats, dogs will respond to kindness, gentleness, and food. Better than cats, if you're patient and persistent, they can forgive you, even when you kick them.

I can't help the smirk that comes when I wonder if I'll have to teach Reed not to shit in the house, but I smooth it away before I speak. Even I know that a grin changes the quality of speech, and this guy is an expert on detecting the slightest variations in tone. If I’m trying to communicate with him in any meaningful way, the worst thing I could do by way of a start would be to let him hear me laughing at him.

"You okay there, Malcolm?" I ask, deciding to stick with his given name. I hope he doesn't take it as an insult. I want him to understand that I'm trying real hard to treat him as a person, not just some evil little troll who's content being another cog in the Imperial Machine.

He nods, licks his lips, and manages to whisper, "Fine."

He's not. I can tell. He's shaking all over with tension, waiting for the battering to start. I can feel it through the mattress, and I'm sure he knows. But maybe he's figured out that there's a chance for him to live here that _doesn't_ involve him serving as an incubator for some fucking alien-human hybrid, and if he wants to pretend he's fine, I won't deny him.

"Now, I'm gonna take the bandages off your eyes, Malcolm," I tell him. "So, don't be afraid when you feel my hands at your face."

"Commodore!" Liz scolds me. "Doctor Salazar said…"

"I know what Miguel said, Liz, but I cleared this with him. If the General an' I are gonna have a heart-to-heart, we're gonna do it face-to-face. Now get on out of here."

"But, sir…"

"You're dismissed, Lieutenant!" I growl at her as I gently peel away the bandage that's wrapped around Reed's face. "An' don't think for one little minute I won't still come over there an' put a boot up your ass if that's what it takes to get you movin'. Now shove off! An' shut the door behind you!"

"Y-yes, sir," she says, sounding more subdued, though if I know her at all she sticks her tongue out at the door the minute she’s safely on the other side of it.

It's been difficult making this transition from the hard bastard who prods his people forward with threats and abuse to the leader who encourages them by example. Sometimes I have to remind them, and myself, that I still have the option to get physical.

I actually started working on the kinder, gentler Tucker shortly after the Empress transferred me to Jupiter Station, but back then, it was just little things, words mostly, _please_ and _thank you, well done, nice work_. And it was just for me, to make my work a little more tolerable. Some people saw it as a sign of weakness, _asking_ people to do their jobs, _thanking_ them when they were finished, and _praising_ them for work well done. It didn't take much to show them that I still knew how the game was played. Once they realized I'd only participate if forced, and that, if forced, I was damned sure going to win, they usually stopped pushing the issue. I had hoped that someday I could carve a niche for myself where I could work away, just doing my job, a happy minion in service to the Empire, and not have to look over my shoulder anymore.

But the kindness _worked_ – and more than that, it _spread_. I’ll admit I was amazed what a difference it made. Okay, your staff work as hard as they have to to keep your boot off their asses when that’s the kind of boss you are, but I found out that when they can earn a pat on the head they’ll often work _harder_ than they have to. And it doesn’t even have to involve extra credits in the paycheck or any additional privileges, though these days I make sure those are available for those who deserve them; people who’ve been reared all their lives in terror of anyone in authority over them will do most everything but kill for a word of honest praise.

I know that’s what Reed was originally coming to Jupiter Station to investigate. Because by the usual Imperial standards, what I achieved wasn’t possible, and control freaks like the Triad never like things happening they don’t have an explanation for.

Maybe it was just as well for both of us that Em and Alpha had other plans for him. I sure wouldn’t have been looking forward to having to explain to him that all this progress had been achieved by kindness. If by any stretch of the imagination I’d have been able to convince him it was the truth, I’d probably have had to call Phlox to give him CPR.

"All that's left is the pads," I tell him now, grinning to myself at that reflection. "Just, don't open your eyes right away. Give yourself a minute to adjust."

"Hurt me and I'll bite off your fingers and swallow them whole," he croaks, and I wonder how long it's been since he actually spoke. I didn’t go near him during his captivity unless I actually had to, but while I was there it didn’t seem to me that anyone at all was treating him like he actually _could_ talk. He was like some lab animal you see strapped down while a tube drips acid into its eyes – something that’s just there to provide data, and nobody gives a shit how much pain it’s in.

I scoff quietly. "That's an empty threat," I say, though I try to sound a bit jokey rather than plain dismissive. "It's been so long since you've had solid food, you'd puke the first one up before you got the next one down."

For one moment, the little psycho has a positively murderous expression on his face, but then he nods, and there's that snarling little smirk he gets when he's amused but plans to make you pay for it anyway, accompanied by just the softest huff of air that might be a laugh.

"We have a lot to discuss, Malcolm," I continue, "an' I think it's only fair that you get to look me in the eye while we talk." Then I ever-so-gently peel the gauze pads away. They're rather wet to the touch, and I realize without even having to think about it that sometime in the past few minutes, they gave him the privacy he needed to release some of the fear and frustration that has to be overwhelming him now. "Take it slow," I tell him. "If the light hurts, stop, an' give yourself time to adjust."

Surprisingly, he does as I say, but then I suppose I'd behave myself, too, if I was strapped to a bed, in the hands of people I believed wanted to kill me, and afraid of going blind. Slowly, he opens his eyes, squeezes them shut, squints, scowls, blinks rapidly for a few seconds, and finally glares at me. That infamous look isn't half so intimidating given the evidence I still hold in my hand that he's been crying and the fact that his eyes don't seem to focus properly just yet, but I still wonder if I'd have more sense if my mama had beat me more often when I was a child. This isn't some lazy old barn cat I'm trying to tame, or some cuddly little beagle pup. Reed is a pit bull trained to fight, and when a fighting pit sinks his teeth into you, he locks his jaws and shakes his head and doesn't stop until something tears loose.

And here I am, trying to coax him into eating out of my hand. Not for the first time, I ask myself, _Trip Tucker, what in the hell were you thinkin'?_

"Why am I alive?" His voice grates against my ears like nails on an old chalkboard. I used to have great fun tormenting whoever was around by scratching the old schoolhouse antique Daddy kept out in his workshop, but this is something different. Worse than sounding uncomfortable, he doesn't sound like himself, and he's had so much taken from him…

Ah, hell. Every time I feel bad for what they did to him, I get pissed at myself. Between almost a year of barely talking (if he talked at all) and all that howling like a damned old hound dog just a few minutes ago, I expect his throat must feel pretty rough. Reed is, hands down, the most horrible person I have ever known, and that's saying a hell of a lot considering what Em, Alpha, and Phlox …and I… have done to him this past year or so, but I pour him a drink anyway.

* * *

**Chapter Thirteen**

**Compassion and a Kindness**

_General Malcolm Reed_

The last of the bandages are gently pulled away, and it’s with an abundance of caution that I oh-so-carefully, crack my slightly gummy lids just barely open. It isn't just the light that has me taking such extraordinary care, though that in itself is painful enough to make me squeeze them shut again fairly smartly at first. I’m wary because I’ve always imagined Tucker fancies himself to be some kind of Southern Gentleman who’d never dream of hitting a man who couldn't see the punch coming, but I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if he was sitting there, fists clenched, just waiting for the moment when I can properly focus on his knuckles slamming into my face.

Sounds eminently reasonable to me. It’s exactly what I’d do, after all.

When I finally do adjust to the light level (which I can tell is quite low from the depth of shadows even though it's still uncomfortably bright for me), I turn my best glare on Commodore Gargoyle, and am astonished for a moment to discover he has acquired a golden aura and a shining halo. Then I realize that everything the light touches has a bit of an amber glow, and conclude that it must be something wrong with my eyes causing this effect.

Could be worse. At least he’s not a saint.

Needless to say, the thought of having damaged vision worries me, but as my Southern Gentleman captor hasn't broken my nose or bloodied my lip _yet_ , I decide it can wait at least a few minutes. Tucker, the ignorant oaf, sits there staring at me, seeming to be expecting me to speak. Since there’s a much bigger question on my mind right now than what has happened to my eyes, for once in my contrary life, I oblige.

"Why am I alive?" My voice is soft and scratchy, and speaking is a little uncomfortable – the result, I’d imagine, of almost a year of disuse followed by a good five minutes of howling, but at least to my own ears it seems to carry some of my indignation and an adamant demand for answers. If there's going to be a conversation going, I _have_ to have an answer to this at least. I may not believe it when I get it, but at least it’ll be something I can work with.

Instead of replying, Tucker frowns at me, reaches across the bed to the hospital table parked on the other side, swings it around so it's across me, takes the plastic cup and pitcher off it, pours a drink, and locks his eyes on mine. I lick my lips, suddenly aware of how very dry they are, how cottony my mouth feels and how scratchy my throat.

Still holding my gaze, Tucker raises the cup and drinks the entire thing in one go. I'm so dry I can't even salivate at the thought of how very refreshing just a single sip of water would be. Bastard! But if this is his idea of coercion, whatever he wants, he's going to have to try harder. He probably thinks he’s playing nasty, but he’s nowhere near my league.

He pours a second cupful. The gentle _glug-glug_ of water going from the pitcher to the cup makes me swallow almost desperately, but I won't ask him for anything.

Then he puts the pitcher down and does the most extraordinary thing.

He holds the cup out to me.

I scowl at him in confusion, and he has the nerve to grin.

"Now, you know it's not poisoned," he tells me. "So there's no reason to be afraid. If you refuse it," he chuckles, "you're just gonna have to admit that you're so damned stubborn you're stupid."

I'm utterly ashamed to admit that I hadn't even considered the possibility of poison, and I have to wonder if Phlox's drugs have permanently altered my brain. I lick my lips and stare at the cup. Tucker is right. I _am_ thirsty, and there _is_ no reason to refuse.

Except that the first surrender inevitably leads to the second, and maybe he’s better at this than I thought….

Water, however, is life. Whatever’s to come, I need to be in the best physical condition I can to resist it. And in these circumstances, pride gives way to practicality every time.

Then, just as I'm trying to raise a hand to accept the drink, he says brusquely, "Suit yourself," and begins to remove the cup.

"No!" I protest, and the whimper is bloody humiliating. The look he gives me is one I don't recognize at first, it's been so long since I've seen it on another's face: compassion. I’m mortified, but thirst is now too all-consuming for me to listen to hurt pride. "I…I do want to drink," I tell him, anxious to keep that cup within reach until I can get at it. "I just…"

"It's all right," he says, and I swear I hear an encouraging note in his voice. "Take your time. Miguel said you'd be in an' out for a while. I guess you're just out at the moment."

It takes a monumental effort to drag my arm out from under the covers and reach for the cup, but he waits patiently. When I finally get there, my hand is trembling so badly, I slop most of the water out of the cup as soon as he releases it. He quickly wraps his hand around mine, locks eyes with me, and nods. I understand that I am supposed to guide the cup and he will support it so that I can get at least as much water in me as I already have on me.

For a moment I feel pure visceral reaction from the touch of human skin on mine, without the barrier of surgical gloves that has isolated me for so long. The sensation bolts away from my nerve endings, bringing with it a crash of conflicting emotions; probably the strongest is lust, closely followed by a surge of horror and dread. The memories may have been buried for much of the intervening time, but that did nothing to dull them. I bite my lip, concentrating on the fact that it’s _Tucker_ whose hand is touching mine, and that – at least for now – he seems to have no evil intentions towards me…

My god. He's being _kind_ to me! Out of the stunned disbelief as the realisation dawns on me, suspicion surges. Nobody ever does _anything_ for nothing in this world, and Lucifer knows I’ve never given Tucker any reason to pet me on the head and call me a good little doggy.

What the fuck is he up to?

It doesn't matter right now. Suddenly, I’m so desperately thirsty all that matters is that I drink.

With his help, I lift the cup to my lips and drain it in a few gulps. I want more, and I try to lick up the last drops clinging to the sides. I’ve learned the hard way to take what there is while it’s there.

"Hey!" he says gently. "There's plenty more."

Reluctantly, I let him guide me to lower the cup so it’s sitting on my chest. He fills it again, and this time, with his help, I get the full measure into me. It's so cool, lovely and refreshing, such a relief, that before I know it, I’ve said, "Thank you." A politeness so alien to me that I honestly can’t remember the last time I offered it to anyone. 

Maybe it’s that worrying development which allows me to bear the disengagement of his fingers from my hand without either weeping or snarling.

"You're welcome," he smiles down at me. "Would you like some more?"

Even with my thirst slaked, it takes an effort of will to draw my dignity about me and refuse; I’ve had all I need, so now I retreat into the armoured formality proper to a prisoner. "No, thank you." It must be the drugs, or the hormones, or…something, keeping me so polite. Now my brain’s clearing a little, I wonder for a moment whether Tucker saved Phlox, too, but I doubt it. Pity. I’d a few scores to settle with that slimy Denobulan bastard, and the digit-shatterer I invented to pass the time while I was strapped to his bio-bed would just have been the hors d’oeuvres.

Tucker nods. "Maybe later." He puts the cup upside down on a paper napkin beside the pitcher. "If you want more, all you gotta do is ask."

Fat chance of that! I don’t _ask_ for anything if I can help it – ‘asking’ places one in the position of a supplicant, making the other person feel correspondingly powerful, and power like that’s almost always misused; I learned that long ago. If I want more, I'll find a way to get it for myself.

"In answer to your question, I thought you could be useful," he says blithely, and it takes me a moment to realize he's finally telling me why he saved me. He waited all this time to tell me that?

Git. 

Once more, I feel like I've just woken up, and edges of black glass slip through my fingers. I don't know what this bloody ‘in-and-out’ business is that the mysterious Miguel has warned Tucker about, but somebody had better find a solution for it before I get out of this bed, or every time I'm 'in' someone else is going to go 'out.' Permanently.

"Useful? For what?" I ask warily. I've been used quite enough for one lifetime, thank you, and I thought I'd put an end to it. Under the circumstances, I think I bloody well have a right to know what he intends to do with me.

“Before I tell you that," he replies, "we need to get a few things straight."

"Such as?"

"First, you were flash-blinded in the explosion. 'Minor corneal burns,' the doc says. That's why your eyes were covered. Nobody's messin' with you. Doctor Salazar figures you'll be all right in another day or two, but we need to protect your eyes until then. So, when this conversation is done, I'm puttin' the bandages right back on, no ifs, an's or buts. 'Cause right now, Doctor Salazar is in a whole lot better position to make my life miserable than you are."

"Oh? Who is he? Some spy the Empress sent to usurp Phlox's position when you rebuild the sickbay?" If Tucker's a stranger to him, maybe sharing the long, tragic story of how he abducted me and let his mad Denobulan scientist experiment on me will convince him that the Commodore is a bastard, and gain me an ally. Ordinarily, I wouldn't dream of playing anyone for sympathy (mostly because anybody who knows me would never waste it on me), but I've never heard of this Doctor Salazar. If he's new on the scene, why shouldn't I have as good a chance as Tucker of getting him to align himself with me? I can be extraordinarily plausible when I put my mind to it. God knows I’ve had enough practice, I should be a shoo-in for an Oscar by now.

Just as I’m starting to feel hopeful, however, something about Tucker's nasty little knowing smirk tells me there's a very good reason why I’d be wasting my time even trying.

"Actually, he's my brother-in-law." The smirk breaks into a grin that makes his hideous face almost cadaverous. If I _am_ having nightmares, I'll definitely be seeing it again tonight.

I bite back an ironic laugh at my own miserable luck. It really is amusing, when I think about it – or at least it would be, if it were happening to somebody else. Who in bloody hell likes their in-laws, and how in Lucifer's name did I end up in the clutches of the one man in the Empire who not only likes, but even apparently _trusts_ his?

* * *

**Chapter Fourteen**

**A New Set of Rules**

_Commodore Charles Tucker III_

Reed's snort of not-exactly laughter sounds as annoyed as it is amused when I tell him that the doctor in charge of his care is my brother-in-law. I can't exactly say I blame him, though, not when he has to be scared shitless and desperate to find an ally. He must have thought his luck had finally turned for the better; I mean, who the hell likes their in-laws? Other than me, I mean. Miguel and I are pretty tight. Matter of fact, I have more in common with him than I do with my brother Bert who married him into the family. So, good luck, General Disaster; he's one person I am sure will _always_ have my back.

"The second thing you need to know, Malcolm," I resume filling him in on the state of things, "is that I'm not gonna lie to you. Anything you ask, the answer will be the truth, whether I think you'll like it or not. Sometimes, the truth might be, 'I won't tell you that,' an' sometimes it might be, 'I don't actually know, but here's what I think.' Whatever the case, whatever the question, you have my word, that I will be completely honest with you."

"And I'm supposed to _believe_ that?" he asks in disbelief, literally laughing in my face.

I can't help smiling back at him. "I know how crazy it sounds, Malcolm," I assure him. "An' if that isn't the most ironic question ever, I don't know what is; but yes, eventually, I'm hopin' you will come to believe that whatever I say to you is true."

"Why would you do that?" he demands. "Why take a risk like that, with _me_ of all people? The truth can make you vulnerable. You have to realize that if our positions were reversed…"

"Yeah, I know, you'd fuck with my head until I thought down was up an' black was white, an' once you got all the secrets out of me that you could use, you'd tell me death was life an' watch me kill myself for your amusement."

I guess I must have been thinking of Martin Roberts. I don't quite know where else all of that could have come from, and maybe it’s not so surprising that I sound a little bitter. Roberts was a good kid, and didn’t deserve what he got.

"Don't worry, Malcolm, I haven't forgotten for one little minute who an' what you are, what you've done, who you've hurt, an' how much you hate me," I tell him. "But we have an _opportunity_ here. The two of us could be stronger together than either of us could ever be on our own, but we'd have to be able to trust each other."

His long, bitter laugh at that turns slowly into something that sounds more like hysterical sobbing, but he sheds no tears, so I make no move to comfort him. I doubt he'd appreciate it anyway, even if I tried.

When he finally has breath enough to speak he says, "If you think I'm ever likely to trust anyone again, I can only conclude that the delta radiation has finally cooked your brain."

Ignoring the insult, I just nod and tell him, "I know it seems like an impossible ask, but we've done impossible things before, you an' me. When we helped Archer bring back the _Defiant_ , we'd have been just as happy to kill each other as look at each other, but we turned the tide of the war an' acquired the technology that saved the Empire.

"When I think of the things we could accomplish if we would _choose_ to work together an' _trust_ each other to work toward a common goal instead of each of us expectin' the other to stab him in the back at the first opportunity for advancement, I think bein' honest with you is a risk worth takin'. I'm hopin', if I never lie to you an' never let you down, that you _will_ eventually start to believe me, even against your own better judgment. I know it's my only chance in hell of earnin' your trust, an' it's a mighty damn slim one at that."

His expression tells me all I need to know. He thinks I really have lost my cotton-pickin' mind.

"Well, I suppose, as long as you realize the odds of my ever trusting anyone again, let alone _you_ , are significantly _less_ than the odds of my turning into the bloody Easter Bunny," he says derisively, "it could at least be entertaining."

He sits there smirking, and I can just see the gears in his mind a-turning, trying to think of the most awkward and embarrassing questions to ask me so that he can gauge how committed I am to my promise of honesty. I wonder how disappointed he'll be if he asks a lot of inappropriate questions and I just tell him I refuse to answer.

Deciding that's a bridge we'll burn when we come to it, I hit him instead with my next bullet point. "The third thing you need to know is, as long as you give us no reason, nobody here is gonna hurt you."

He scoffs. Openly, and I can't blame him. "You might want to have a word with Miss Cutler about that," he suggests. “I think the shift in the balance of power has gone to her head a bit already.”

"Believe me, I will," I assure him, "but, to be fair, what she did _was_ necessary. She's really only guilty of bad technique an' poor bedside manner."

"And, some would argue, deliberate cruelty," he sneers. Hah! Like he should be surprised about _that_ , given what he did to her back on _Enterprise_. I’ve seen more life in roadkill than in what he left of her by the end.

He's making a point, pressing the issue. He needs to be right, but the fact is, he's not. If this Great Experiment of mine is going to work, I have to be honest with him. I can't just tell him what he wants to hear to get him on my side.

"She might have seemed cruel, the way she went about it," I admit. "An' I'll be discussin' that with her, but there's no way it was deliberate, Malcolm. She doesn't have it in her to hurt you. Besides, I think we can agree that we've each done much worse, an' not always on orders or in the service of the Empire."

He stiffens; I've hit my mark. Eventually he nods tersely. "Agreed."

"Good. An' for the record, that little girl has saved your life three times now," I tell him, and he couldn’t look more startled and horrified if I'd dropped a live grenade in his lap. "Twice in one day, as a matter of fact."

"She…How?... _Why?_ "

"I'll be damned if I know _why_." I shrug, and really I’m not pretending; I never have understood what Liz saw in him that no-one else did, despite her trying to explain it to me that night in her quarters. "She has more reason than anyone to want to see you die a slow an' painful death, but I'll tell you _how_."

He leans forward a bit, clearly anxious to know, and I'm not surprised. If I were him, I wouldn't expect anyone to care whether I lived or died either. It must be quite the novelty.

"First time was when that Gorn booby trap took you down," I say, and right away he's arguing.

"Captain Archer was there! I remember…."

 _"Archer left you to die!"_ I shout him down. Far from sugarcoating it, I make my voice harsher than necessary to be sure he understands how, at that moment in the access tube, the only thing standing between him and the Grim Reaper in the form of an engineer with an axe to grind before using it to split his skull, was a shy, terrified girl whom he'd abused in the most unspeakable ways. "You'd served your purpose in the mutiny an' you weren't useful anymore. Don't you remember? He'd already taken Mayweather on as his personal bodyguard. You were only good to him for followin' orders an' he had far less dangerous men to do that."

"But I…I woke up in Sickbay!" he protests. I can tell this matters to him; his voice is usually quite controlled, but I hear a definite note of panic in it now.

"No thanks to Jonathan Archer," I tell him cruelly. Quite apart from forcing it home to him, I get a kick out of demolishing that crazy loyalty of his towards that maniac Archer, who’d rewarded it by leaving him to die where he’d fallen if his enemies didn’t get to him first. "It was _Liz Cutler_ who snuck up there in that access way, even before I had a chance to get up there an' make sure it was structurally sound. Hell, she was there before we knew the Gorn was dead! She did first aid on you. Stopped the bleedin', stabilized your condition. She kept you alive long enough to get _real_ help. That was the _first_ time she saved your life.

"Second time was just a few minutes later. She heard someone movin' around up there. Wouldn't help you for her to die, too, so she ran an' hid."

I look him right in the eye, then. It's harder than I'd expected, but if I'm going to make this confession, I'm going to do it the right way. It's what my daddy taught me. When you admit to someone that you've wronged them, you look them in the eye like a man and you deal with the consequences when they come.

I make the words come out very clearly so there’s no possibility he doesn’t think I mean every one of them. "When I came across you that day, it was my dream come true. I'd been waitin' for my chance to kill you, slow an' hard, an' there you were, helpless on the floor. I smashed your hand under my boot an' kicked you a couple of times. I'd have stomped you to death, if she hadn't stopped me."

There were plenty of times on _Enterprise_ when he looked daggers at me. All of them pale compared to the look he’s giving me now. If sheer concentrated malevolence could kill, I’d keel over on the spot. "You…" he hisses. "You…"

He doesn't know what to say, what accusation he wants to make. Clearly I didn’t go through with stomping him to death, but he can't remember why not. I fill him in.

"Liz came out of the shadows an' sort of wrapped herself around me so I couldn't hurt you anymore," I inform him. "An' then she begged me, tears streamin' from her eyes, snot runnin' from her nose, she _begged_ me to help you."

He lies back a bit and takes his time absorbing that information. "You expect me to believe that's all it took?" he growls at me finally, his tone hard with derision again. “You had me down and wanted me dead, and a crying woman stopped you?”

I shrug. "I don't pretend to know why I let her talk me out of it," I admit. I don't tell him I remember groping Liz and getting nothing but tears for a reaction and thinking she was crying for me as much as for him because I was such a horrible bastard and so fucked up that I'd kick a man when he was down. "But there's no way in _hell_ I'd have helped you if Liz Cutler hadn't asked me."

He's quiet for a minute, his eyes narrowed. Then he says, "You told me there were three times."

I snort a laugh; I can't believe he hasn't worked it out. I can only imagine he just wants to make me say it. “Do you really think you'd be here an' breathin' if you didn't have at least one advocate on Jupiter Station?"

That hits him. That really hits him hard. "I don't believe you." His voice sounds croaky, and I don't think it has anything to do with a sore throat this time. "She has no reason…"

"Fine, suit yourself," I tell him bitterly. "All the better for me. You just be as mean an' cruel as you like to her, like you always were. If you can make her give up on you, then I can do what I want without some damned Jiminy Cricket whisperin' in my ear about good an' bad an' right an' wrong an' the ethical way of doin' things an' what kind of a man I want to be!"

He's quiet for a very long time now, his gaze abstracted, and I let him sit. If Liz _is_ right about him, if he's capable of any kind of human feeling at all, it has to affect him to know that someone he so brutally destroyed still cares enough to fight for his life. How it will affect him is anybody's guess. I'm not the least bit convinced he's capable of gratitude, but he might surprise me.

Finally he looks at me. I don't know what he's thinking, but he seems to have decided something. He opens his mouth, but I cut him off before he can speak. I don't want him to have the final say on Liz Cutler.

"One other thing you need to know, Malcolm, is that I have no intention of hurtin' you, but I will _not_ allow you to threaten me an' mine," I say.

I lift my left arm, making sure he sees the stylish leather cuff I wear on the wrist of it, and tap a couple of buttons on the small control panel set in it. He shifts slightly, and gives me a perturbed look. He knows I've done something, but it's subtle enough that he can't tell what. I lift my brow and tap one button a couple more times. He takes a deep breath and struggles to suppress the little surprised sound that he can't help making. He knows now what I'm doing, but can't tell exactly how I'm doing it and doesn't want to acknowledge the power I have over him.

I tap the button five or six more times at five second intervals. It's real interesting watching his face contort as he tries to take back the control that I have so easily stolen from him. Finally, after about a minute of silent, stubborn struggle, he gasps once like a drowning man breaking the surface and then lies there panting like a swimmer who's just finished the 1500 meter freestyle in record time.

"Fucking…bastard!" he gasps in little more than a whisper. "What…did you…do to…me?"

I just watch him for another thirty seconds or so, gasping like a landed fish and slowly surrendering to panic. I want him to sit with that feeling for a little bit, live inside it, get to know it real well. I want him to know exactly what I can do to him, if he makes me. I know what he's feeling, because I had Miguel demonstrate the device on me, though he did it without surgical implantation; I'm not going to torture anyone without knowing just what I'm doing to them. I'd rather not torture them at all, but I don't yet know what other language Reed understands. The device I invented is fucking terrifying, but it doesn't hurt. I know it's a feeling Malcolm won't soon forget and that it will be enough to keep him in line for as long as it's needed. There's nothing like feeling yourself dying to make you know how much you want to live, and now that I'm offering him a life beyond breeding, I'm thinking he'll work with me, as long as I can gain his trust. _If_ there’s any trust left in him, of course. I get the feeling that having let his guard down with Alpha and Em the way he must have done, and being kicked square in the balls for his trouble, isn’t calculated to have left him craving to trust anyone else.

I don't make him beg. As soon as his eyes start rolling in his head, showing he’s starting to _really_ panic and looking for a way out, I hit the button to slow things down. One tap every five seconds, until things are back to normal. Miguel told me if I accelerate or slow down his heartbeat too abruptly, I could cause a heart attack.

"I am _an engineer_ , Malcolm," I tell him when his breathing is steady again. "I build things. Not just starships an' warp reactors, but widgets an' gadgets an' useful things. Attached to the back of your breastbone is a device just a few cubic microns bigger than a rank pip. I invented an' built it myself, in collaboration with Doctor Salazar, who believed at the time we were just miniaturizin' an old-fashioned medical device called a 'pacemaker' that was used to control the rate of a person's heartbeat when their own nerves couldn't do it properly. Seems people who spend a lot of time goin' from zero-g to Earth normal – like some of my ship-builders who've been doin' the job for twenty or thirty years an' might go in an' out of the construction bay three or four times in a shift when they're laying a keel – are startin' to develop heart problems that modern medicine doesn't know how to fix. Now, Doctor Salazar, bless his heart, could only see the medical applications of the device, but I figured out pretty damned quick that it could be used to … well, to teach a little self-control to someone who's not used to havin' limits without all the fuss an' bother of physical restraints or druggin' him into a coma.

"I control the device with this wrist strap," I continue, turning my wrist to show him the control panel again. "It sends a constant signal to the device in your chest. As long as it's set at zero, the device inside you does nothin'. Give me a reason, an' I can adjust it to make you very uncomfortable. Give me a good enough reason, an' I can make your heart explode."

Once again, if looks could kill I'd be a dead man by the glare he's shooting me. I know this is a helluva way to try to gain someone's trust, but I also know Reed better than he thinks I do, certainly better than he's comfortable having anyone know him. I know how insulted he'd be if I didn't treat him like the dangerous man he is. If he were fighting fit, he could probably snap me in two with his bare hands and find six different ways to kill the pieces before they hit the floor. It's my hope that being upfront about the measures I'm taking to control him will help him feel he's being treated with respect. God help me, I'm looking for an ally in the little psycho, not a tool.

"The wrist strap is bioelectric, bio-secured, an' bio-controlled," I continue. "It runs off the microvolt electrical impulses in human skin. It's keyed to my DNA, so it only works in contact with _my_ skin. It monitors my pulse every sixty seconds, an' if it's too fast, too slow, or gone, you're dead. So, if I have an accident, or a heart attack or a stroke, it could really suck for you," I conclude cheerfully.

The scowl he shoots me makes it abundantly clear that he has no appreciation for my sense of humor.

"When the wrist strap is out of range of the device in your chest, the device seeks out a secondary signal. That secondary signal comes from a transmitter installed somewhere nearby. As you get your strength back, you'll be able to wander around the room. As you gain my trust, you might be allowed to wander around the facility. The transmitter will be programmed with the areas you're authorized to explore. The device in your chest transmits your coordinates continuously. Go too far or where you don't belong, the device will warn you to turn back. If you don't turn back, it will kill you."

He's squirming uncomfortably now, as much as his bonds will allow, and he's no longer looking at me. I'm sure, somewhere in that twisted little mind of his, he's heard the cage door slam shut. Even I can’t avoid the next thought ‘ _another_ cage door’ – god knows, it must feel like forever since he was actually free to stand on his own two feet. It mightn’t be so bad if he’d been the layabout type to start with, but on _Enterprise_ he was hardly ever still – if he wasn’t prowling the ship or terrorizing somebody he was in the gym, toning the muscles I saw that day when he was chasing down that runaway ensign. Maybe it's the drugs Phlox was pumping into him for the past year, maybe it's fatigue, maybe it's postpartum depression, maybe sheer inactivity is eating at him; whatever the case, he's having a very hard time concealing his anxiety. There's not much I can do about that. He's just going to have to deal with it. It might be easier if he can learn to trust me, but I can't force that trust. It will have to come on its own. If it ever does.

"Look at me, Malcolm," I order him quietly. He deliberately turns his head away, so I grab him by the chin and gently force him to face me. He doesn't really resist, though I recognize the gray shine of armor plating, fully polarized against the attack he’s expecting. Still, I look him dead in the eye, and make sure he's looking back. "This is just a protective measure to keep you from hurtin' us. You have my word, I won't _ever_ use it to coerce anything from you."

Of course, by the rules of the Empire, a man's word doesn't mean spit. But sooner or later, Malcolm will figure out that I'm not playing that game anymore.

* * *

**Chapter Fifteen**

**Filling In The Blanks**

_General Malcolm Reed_

Tucker is sitting there staring at me with the air of a gambler who has just put all his cards on the table. I wonder if he _really_ expects me to trust him when he's just demonstrated that he can cause me to die a slow, horrifying death at the touch of a button.

Obey? I’m good at that. I learned hard, I learned fast, and I learned well. Among the other lessons I learned at the same time and in the same way, and which I haven’t forgotten either. ‘Trust’, however….

…Well.

Once again he seems to be waiting for me to speak, so I do.

"How, precisely, do you propose to 'use' me _without_ employing coercion?" Try as I may (and do), I can’t keep the bitterness out of my voice. I realize confrontation may not be the wisest tack to take at the moment, but he's just promised me certain death if I fail to comply with his wishes, and then swore a solemn oath not to try to coerce me into doing anything for him! When he throws a promise like that out there like it's nothing, I can't imagine he expects me to just pass over it without comment – even if it does give him the pleasure of thinking I was deluded enough to believe him. I'm not surprised he can't see the lie his actions give his words. I've always suspected some of that delta radiation penetrated his brain.

"I'm just gonna _ask_ ya," he says in what I suppose is meant to be a reassuring tone. "That's all."

"Ask me what?" I’m nothing if not persistent. Ask any one of a number of people who tried to withhold information from me over the course of my career. I’m sure you could find at least one or two still alive if you tried hard enough, though I definitely wouldn’t vouch for their mental stability.

"We'll get to that," he says.

‘We’ll get to that’? What kind of answer does he think that is? Why the mystery? Bloody annoying gargoyle git. I'm beginning to wonder if he actually has a _clue_ what he wants to do with me. Maybe this is all just his idea of a stonking great joke, to be played at my expense till he gets bored of it. I roll my eyes, and it hurts, so I close them briefly.

"I'm not sure to what ‘use’ you could put me," I tell him. Once again I can’t keep the bitterness out of my voice; I’ve been rescued only to be ‘used’ again, it seems, though at least I don’t suppose Tucker will shag me to impregnate me with a little hybrid monster. So if he doesn’t want me for reproductive purposes, and _presumably_ he doesn’t want to shag me for entertainment (though having watched some of those tapes I’m not entirely sure that’s out of the question, and it would certainly open up some interesting avenues for revenge), that leaves the only use I can think of: power. And however suicidal it may be of me to mention a few unpalatable facts at this juncture, I wonder if he really has thought this thing through. So I continue, in the hardest voice I can muster, "I’ve been out of circulation for the best part of a year, as best I can guess – I don’t know. It could be more than that, I doubt if it’s less. Half of the time I didn’t even know what fucking planet I was on, let alone what day it was. Nobody bothered to keep a mere incubator up to speed with anything. So I very much doubt I have much influence left."

He starts to giggle, and I have to think that's he's lost what little there is left of his bourbon-soaked, irradiated mind. Lucky me, to be rescued from the clutches of Doctor Frankenstein only to end up at Igor's mercy.

Though people who giggle at secret thoughts beside someone who’s their prisoner are not particularly reassuring. I’d like to think I never actually got around to giggling (I’m really not a giggling sort of person), but I know perfectly well just how menacing a secret smile can be.

Then he addresses me directly, with an air of probably spurious sincerity. "You still control about two-thirds of the MACOs. It's only been the past two or three weeks that whispers of 'Where is Reed, really?' have hit the grapevine, an' nobody's answerin' that question. The whole time you were playin' incubator, Em an' Alpha were puttin' out bulletins in your name. They actually had someone design 'em a program where they could sit in front of a vid screen an' have a live conversation with someone, an' at the other end of the transmission, people'd be seein' your face an' hearin' your voice. It even translated Spanish for Em, in case she slipped up."

"Why would they do that, and how would you know?" I demand, suffocating a tendril of hope before it can slip even a single tiny root into the never-very-fertile soil of my imagination.

"I know, because one of my people did the work for 'em an' he told me about it," he says, with an air of smugness that makes me want to throw the water jug at him if only I had the strength to lift the bloody thing. "‘Why’ is a little bit of guesswork on my part, but if I'm right, you can probably confirm it. The way I see it, when Em had us…take you…"

I’m gratified to see he is uncomfortable admitting to what they did to me. Surely he knows there will be repercussions, sooner rather than later if I can arrange them, but I will enjoy watching him suffer the anxiety of waiting to see what they will be. After all, now that he has apparently saved my life, I can hardly kill him; but I can certainly make him wish he was dead. His assistance rendered to those in charge during Project Pregnancy may have been compulsory, but that doesn’t mean it’s forgotten.

Or forgiven.

I’ve acquired a few mottoes down the course of my short but eventful life. One of my favourites has always been ‘If you kick me when I’m down, you’d better pray I never get up’. I remember thinking that one quite emphatically as Tucker’s boot landed against my ribs as I lay helpless on the floor of the shuttlebay.

"…you had too many MACOs loyal to you to just snatch you out of the chain of command. It would have caused a power vacuum, an' the fight for supremacy followin' that would have seen a lot of your best people die, leavin' the MACOs weak. It would have taken the organization years to rebuild, an' Em an' Alpha couldn't afford that. Whatever they were up to, I suspect they needed the MACOs as their power base. Maybe that was one of the reasons they wanted you kept alive. But you're the real power in the MACOs, so they had to forge orders an' fake propaganda to convince the MACOs you were still in power."

I stare at him with a squint-eyed scowl. It doesn't improve his face at all, but it protects my still-sensitive eyes from the lights behind him.

For an engineer, he certainly has a startlingly accurate grasp of the realities of power. His reasoning’s impeccable. And he’s given me food for a great deal of thought, assuming of course that my brain can be coaxed into more reliable functioning than it seems to be capable of at the moment.

I won’t claim the words ‘that was one of the reasons why they wanted you kept alive’ don’t flay something deep inside me that’s still raw, but that’s something I have to deal with alone and in my own time. I have had ample time to remind myself that ‘love’ is not a concept that would actually exist on Wolfplanet Mindfuck, and that my falling into it with Alpha was my fault, not his. So, painful as it is to admit it, Tucker has a firmer grasp of the realities of the situation than I do just at present, and therefore it will be as well if I keep that in mind.

"You're not as stupid as I thought, Tucker," I grudgingly admit. "That actually makes quite a lot of sense."

"I thought so," he agrees, so proudly it's almost comical; apart from his extraordinary grasp of all things mechanical he’s such a charmingly simple fellow. "So, all we gotta do now is keep 'em satisfied that you're still in charge until you're well enough to get back to work, an' then you can step back into your old life!"

"And you’d let me _do_ that?" I ask suspiciously, not even trying to keep the disbelief out of my voice. What the hell, is he on something or does he think I came up on the down train?

"Under the right circumstances, yeah," he affirms, so airily that I nearly find myself thinking he might be telling the truth. "Matter of fact, I'm really kinda countin' on it."

At this point – I can’t help it – the vista of possibilities opens out in front of me. Em and Alpha are dead. All the powers of the Triad are now concentrated in me.

Hoshi never did get married. We were never going to allow one man that much power, and besides, he might have developed ideas about _not_ being content with the limited sphere of command we allowed his wife. By which time, disposing of him might have become not only inconvenient, but difficult.

So. An unmarried Empress. I’ve reason to remember exactly what talents enabled her to climb so nimbly up the ranks, right to the point where she could slip out of one captain’s bed into another as easily as exchanging one set of see-through lingerie for another….

If this has occurred to me, however, it will undoubtedly have occurred to Tucker too. I very much doubt if he will have had the same personal experience of Hoshi’s horizontal expertise that I did (aboard _Enterprise_ she made little secret of her opinion that his injuries made him repulsive), but I’ve no doubt at all that he would dearly like to sample it for himself. She was one of the hottest little bitches I’ve ever fucked, and having her made available on demand, exclusively to me, would definitely be a plus … alongside effectively absolute power, of course.

Hoshi shackled on one side of a bed and T’Pol on the other. It’s enough to give me a hard-on.

However, this is not the time or the place to dwell on that intriguing possibility – for one thing, getting a raging erection would be damnably inconvenient just at this present moment, and for another that subject leads down corridors lined with razor blades lying in wait. With a terrified swerve I force my mind away from the curvaceous naked visuals and back to more pragmatic issues. 

"Of course, if I _don’t_ co-operate, the right circumstances will never exist. Then what?"

It’s probably not a particularly tactful question to ask. If I were firing on all cylinders, of course, I’d promise my complete cooperation, cross my heart and hope to die… and if you believe _that_ you deserve everything that’s coming to you.

He scowls at me for a long minute. At least I think he scowls. Between the radiation damage and the botched surgical repair, that could just be his normal, neutral look.

Finally he says in a weary tone, "Believe it or not, Reed, I have no intention of killin' you. I don't want to harm a hair on your head. The only way you could possibly make me hurt you would be to threaten someone else when I was out of reach of a phase pistol set to stun."

At this point my instinct for self-preservation decides quite unilaterally to go AWOL. "So, I could say, 'Phantom, you forgot your mask,' or refer to you as Quasimodo, or observe that, 'I didn't realize the Empress had taken to throwing masquerade balls. Oh, it's just you Commodore Tucker,' and you wouldn't want to hurt me?"

It seems when I'm 'in,' I can still be quite the obnoxious bastard, when I want to be. It's a relief to know something of myself remains, after all.

Tucker folds his arms and squints down at me. I blink up at him insolently and try not to show the discomfort of the gritty sensation behind my eyelids as they slide closed and open again.

Tucker's expression makes him look strangely reptilian. The blue eyes glitter like shards of glass. The longer he glares at me, the more I worry that I may have pushed him too far. When I break eye contact, it's not entirely because my damaged eyes are hurting, though I wouldn't admit that to him on pain of death.

Finally he responds, and his voice is rough with repressed anger. "I never said I wouldn't _want_ to hurt you, only that you couldn't _make_ me do it."

Something about his tone makes me feel as though I've just cheated death yet again, and I wonder if he crossed his arms to keep himself from striking me. Then he's gripping my chin, almost hard enough to hurt this time, forcing me to meet his gaze once more.

"You _wanna_ die, Reed?" he says with all the venom of a pit viper. "You can take care of that yourself, if that’s _really_ the best you can do. Soon as you get your strength back, pick a direction an' start walkin'. Once you get out of range, that little button in your chest will drop you like a fuckin' rock.”

I don’t respond because there is nothing to say to that. I am completely and unequivocally his prisoner, and impotent hatred wars with my reluctant, dragging sense of gratitude. The device he has implanted in me enslaves me to his will as effectively as any bonds, drugs, or blackmail. In a way he's no better than Em and Alpha, but I don't think it would be wise to tell him that.

Yet.

"If you won't tell me why you…" I swallow hard. It's difficult to admit what he's done for me. I'm uncomfortable contemplating the debt I owe him because there's no telling how he'll choose to collect. "… _why_ you saved me, can you tell me _how?_ "

He stares at me a little while – calculating, I’m quite sure, the risk involved in giving away any of his secrets (I’m quite sure he has more than one). Finally, he lets go, sits back, and asks, "What one thing is more prevalent in the Empire than duranium?"

I close my eyes and groan. I'm starting to feel very tired and in no condition for games. "Don't give me a fucking riddle. All I want is a straight answer."

"All right, short answer is engineers," he says. "We don't just build starships an' manage warp reactors. We fix anything that's broken. We're like ants. We go anywhere an' get into everything, an' nobody blinks, 'cause everybody needs their gear to work. Warp drive overload? Send in the engineers. Turbo-lift stoppin' between decks? Call out the engineers. Drinks dispenser servin' your tea too hot? Page an engineer.

“After you miscarried, an' they … did it to you the second time. You came back to sickbay screamin'…"

"I recall as much as I want to of what they did to me, thank you, Commodore Tucker," I snarl at him. Given my situation, I probably shouldn't be so brusque, but I can't help myself. Even after all this time, I can … remember. With such clarity that every time my thoughts stray in that direction I don’t know whether I’m going to howl or ejaculate. This time, assured of my inability to resist, they had me put into the bed, where they joined me.

Fear, abyssal. Lust, irresistible. Pain, inescapable. Pleasure, unbelievable. Betrayal, absolute.

At a guess, several hours passed before the blank-faced lackeys were summoned to retrieve what was left of me, sliding me from between two naked, sweat-slicked, satiated bodies. Maybe it was loss that set me screaming as they placed me carefully back on the gurney for return to Sickbay, or maybe it was relief; I was hardly sane enough to know one from the other by that point. I’d screamed often enough in the interim, for one reason or another, though that didn’t stop anything.

Most people, I’d imagine, would turn away from me now. I’m all too aware that too many things are probably showing on my face, things I’d rather have kept private – I blink furiously, dreading that he or anyone else should see me weep. Tucker, however, looks at me gravely, and to my surprise he puts a hand lightly on my upper arm, and leaves it there for a moment before releasing me with a faint squeeze that even despite my mortification I find absurdly comforting.

"Yeah, well, much as I hated you…"

"Hat _ed_?" I want to bite my tongue. I should _not_ be interrupting this man who has so much power over me, but the past tense takes me so by surprise that I blurt out the one dubious word before my brain engages.

He gives me a look I can't define. It might be some kind of smile, but I can't tell for his ruined face. His voice sounds…amused? …definitely, I think he's amused, when he says, "Malcolm, you an' I have a _lot_ to talk about, but for now, just shut up an' let me tell my story, okay?"

For the life of me, I can’t explain why I do what I do next. It's an innocent, childish gesture so completely uncharacteristic of me that I should be embarrassed. I press my lips into a thin line, raise one hand to my mouth, and pantomime zipping it shut. He gives me that might-be-a-smile look, and this time there is definitely a sparkle of humour in his good eye. He actually laughs aloud.

"All right, I'll try bein' brief," he says. "I'll admit I kind of enjoyed watchin' you suffer at first, but after the second time, after they… an' after the pink pool an' all that, well, I sort of lost my stomach for it. It took me a while to form a plan, but I made up my mind that, if the opportunity came up, I was gettin' you outta there.

"If I'm bein' completely honest, at first it was just for the satisfaction of bein' able to kill you myself," he admits, and oh, the things I would do, if I could do, for that admission, "but hell, no human bein', no matter how rotten, deserves what they were doin' to you."

I keep my mouth shut, but my head snaps around to look at him in astonishment. Perhaps I misheard, perhaps I'm finally losing my mind, but no, it's written all over his ruined face, it's even in his posture. He actually felt _sorry_ for me! Who in the fucking Empire feels _sorry_ for _me_? If I had any strength at all, he'd be dead now. How _dare_ he feel _sorry_ for me?

"By the time that machine SNAFUed on them, I had about three different plans in mind, dependin' on the opportunity that presented. But then you, with your 'End of Humanity' crap, which, _believe_ me, we're gonna talk about later, put a wrench in my plans – all of ‘em.

“I was pretty proud of that little explosion I set up for you. I know how much you like 'em. I thought it was a fittin' send off. What I didn't tell you was, I put a five-microsecond delay in that circuit, an' a signal relay, on an old disused diplomatic frequency."

I'm bizarrely touched by the thought that he designed an explosion especially for me – I’d respond with a bashful ‘Aww, you shouldn’t have!’ but I don’t think he’d buy it. Though I'm loath to admit it, I’m extremely impressed that he could not only do it at all, but arrange ‘on the wing’, so to speak, for it to be set off on demand by the person it was designed to kill. He managed to make the reconfiguration look like it was all part of the work he was summoned to do, and _also_ extemporize a fluent spiel of nonsensical technobabble for Phlox encoded with instructions telling me how to trigger it. I'm beginning to realize that Commodore Tucker might just be a bit more competent than I thought, and I wonder again why I am alive when I so grossly underestimated a man who has such good reason to want me dead.

"Then I had one of the technicians who just happened to be a friend of mine hit you with a little strontium-89 in your medication, an'…"

_"You irradiated my medication?"_

I bite my lip and remind myself I should _not_ be yelling at this man. I should _not_ be interrupting him. I should _not_ look at him crossly. I should _not_ breathe too loudly, on the chance it might irritate him. He effectively holds my heart in his hands, and I should _not_ do _anything_ to provoke him.

"Will you relax?" he says, fortunately sounding only mildly peeved. "It was an extremely low dose, just enough to tag you, an' it only has a half-life of 50 days, so you're not gonna glow in the dark forever. Your total exposure was about the same as three years of ordinary background radiation, which is still less than an average scan in an imagin’ chamber.

“It releases gamma rays, which are so common in the background spectrum that we don't even scan for them unless there's a specific reason," he continues, without giving me time to mention that the injection of a radioactive substance into the body results in a much higher effective dose to the vital organs than a gentle shower of the same amount of diagnostic radiation flowing over the same body in an imaging tube. I don't know if he, as an engineer, would be aware of this phenomenon; I only fully comprehended it when I began to look into developing side arms that would fire a radioactive pellet, a project which I abandoned when I discovered the prohibitive expense, in terms of both credits and payload space, of properly storing the ammunition.

"Nobody would have guessed you were emittin' them unless they were scannin' you specifically for gamma radiation," he blathers on smugly, and I decide I'll just have to hope that whomever he had dose me was trained in administering radiopharmaceuticals and understood there was a stated or implicit order not to harm me. "It also had the benefit that any side effects could be associated with whatever Phlox was doin' to you. We had a cloaked shuttle orbitin' the station. It scanned sickbay for a concentration of gamma radiation an' locked the transporter on to it. When you tripped the circuit, in that five-microsecond delay, the signal relay told the transporter to engage, an' it beamed you out."

He sits there looking self-satisfied, and he has every reason to be. His story, if it's true, is quite remarkable.

"You have a _shuttle?_ " I ask, more than slightly astonished. Even I didn't (or don't, it's hard not to think of myself in the past tense after being out of circulation for so long) have my own shuttle. There was a pool of six available to those of us in the upper echelons of the MACOs, but only Alpha had a personal shuttle kitted out to his specifications. The interior was all pristine white, upholstered in silk and leather, with the benches in the back opening into a surprisingly comfortable king-sized bed.

I remember that bed. Even now, the thought of it roils inside me, unbearably sweet, unbearably painful. The smell of his aftershave was dusty-sweet, like rosemary crushed between the fingers. I licked his mouth, begging, surrendering…. Trusting.

Tucker nods. Still smug. Honestly, I could slap him, except that if I somehow managed to sit up straight I’d probably fall over. I’m appalled by how much effort even the smallest movement costs me now.

"How?" The Empire keeps very careful track of its shuttles. If the commodore were allowed one for his personal use, I doubt very much that he would be allowed to _ever_ cloak it from the scanners.

"Salvage," he says, and I frown because even salvaged parts of vessels are logged and stored and used to repair other ships. He must see my confusion because he goes on to explain, "A ship comes in with a shuttle too damaged to repair. We log it as totaled an' replace it. My guys dismantle the totaled shuttle, log the parts we're scrappin' an' the ones we're savin', an' maybe a circuit board or a transceiver or a pilot's chair gets logged in the scrap column by mistake. A few days or weeks later, that same part mysteriously ends up…well, let's just say, somewhere else. Took me three years, but I got my own shuttle, off the books, an' she's got a transporter an' a cloak. You can't beat that with a stick."

I have to ask. His vanity couldn't possibly resist. "What did you name it?"

"The _Lizzie_ ," he says, holding my gaze.

It takes me a moment. I lower my eyes, hoping to conceal the fact that I'm coming up blank, and try not to wince at the pain this causes as they move behind my lids. At first I think of Cutler, but she's Liz, not Lizzie. Then I nod, remembering.

"A tribute then," I say, "to your younger...?"

"Youngest," he corrects me. "I'm the oldest, she was the baby, of six."

I remember, almost too vividly now, coming across a drunken Chief Engineer Tucker weeping in the observation lounge, lamenting his 'baby' sister who was killed in the Xindi attack on Earth some years back. I ordered a couple of my security officers to drag him back to his quarters and pour him into bed. Even I couldn’t be bothered to come up with a cutting quip on his state of intoxication; the man was so bereft it would never have found its mark. From the depth of his grief, one would have thought the sister was still a child, so I was surprised to learn some time later that she was in her twenties when she was killed. Of course, never having been terribly close to my family, or anyone else for that matter, I was hardly a fit judge of the proper degree of mourning for a sibling of any age. I merely found his behaviour dangerous, disgraceful, and irresponsible.

How the Xindi ever got into the Terran system is beyond me; at the time, the people in charge of security honestly believed our security systems were impregnable. Tucker and I were still stationed on _Enterprise_ together and our mission took us nowhere near their course or Sol when it happened, so there was fuck-all we could have done about it. Still, I remember him mourning her as if he was to blame for her death. At the staff meeting the next morning, he was a miserable bastard, so it was business as usual again. The day the news feed told us that the Xindi home planet had been blasted to smithereens in reprisal he took ten days of the leave he had owing and went on a bender that passed into legend even aboard _Enterprise_ ; Archer scowled, but Forest was still in charge in those days, and he shut one eye to it.

"How do you generate the power needed for a cloak _and_ a transporter in a craft as small as a shuttle?" I don't think it would be wise to stay with the subject of his dead sister, so I change it.

"That's a little trick I …forgot… to translate from the _Defiant_ database," he says. "Maybe, if all goes well, I can explain it to you someday."

"I suppose, if I had any care to be polite, I should thank you for my life," I say, as I neatly file away his casual admission to withholding vital military information from the Empire. He might have saved my life, but as an officer of the MACOs, it's my sworn duty to see him tried for treason. "But I think I'll reserve my thanks until you can answer my initial question: _Why am I alive?"_

He stares at me for a very long time, even takes an indrawn breath once or twice as if he's about to answer then shakes his head.

"Malcolm, I can't tell you yet," he says. "Not because I don't know, mind you, but because tryin' to put it into words right now would be like… like describin' a rainbow to a man who's been blind all his life. We'll be talkin' more while you're here, so for now, just let it be enough to know that… I decided I didn't want you to die."

I have no idea what to say to that. I was never so vain as to think his every waking thought was consumed with plotting my demise, but when he had the opportunity to arrange things so that I could end myself in the depths of despair and grief, he saved me. I can’t wrap my mind around it, so I just sit there, unsure whether that makes him unimaginably kinder than anyone would ever have expected or infinitely crueller than even I could ever have possibly imagined, while he rummages around in the drawer of the stand beside my bed and pulls out some gauze pads and tape.

When I realize what he is about to do, I find my voice. And once again, pleading comes so easily to me that I’m ashamed of myself but I still can’t keep myself from saying it.

"Please don't."

He sighs heavily. "I have to," he says regretfully, and even I think he’s genuinely sorry. "Not just because my brother-in-law will give me hell if I don't, but because he's a good doctor an' I trust his judgement an' I believe him when he says too much light could permanently damage your vision."

He doesn't say it in so many words, but from what he has said, I infer that he actually cares that I should not go blind. I think I might be going 'out' again as that possibility seems just too enormous for me to contemplate. Of course, I remind myself bitterly, he has a ‘use’ for me. Presumably a ‘use’ that would be significantly reduced if I were to lose my eyesight.

By the time my eyes are bandaged, I’m definitely 'out'. He tries to guide my sightless fingers to the controls that raise and lower the head and foot of my bed and shows my hand where to locate and how to close around the call button if I should need anything at all, but when he asks if I understand, all I can do is mumble at him, my throat so tight it’s all I can do to get words out at all. To my mortification, I hope he put a decent bit of gauze padding under that tape.

"That's all right," he assures me gently. "I won't leave you alone. I'll send Liz in to sit with you."

The fear I should experience with that threat is a strangely distant thing. I try to issue a protest, but it comes out a quiet moan. There are too many things for me to deal with already and Liz Cutler is another. She might take it into her head to do worse things than rectal examinations, God knows I gave her more than enough pointers. In my heyday I’d have lain back and dared her to do her worst, but right now I feel so utterly enfeebled that I can’t feel any certainty that just one more blow wouldn’t break me.

I'm not even sure he hears me. Surely, if he did, he would have responded in some way, but all he does is lower the head of the bed so I'm lying comfortably, pull the covers right up to my chin, and stroke my hair back from my face.

"Just sleep, Malcolm," he says, his voice sounding strangely kind. "You're safe."

=/\=

I'm not sure how long I lie there dozing, but when I hear the door swing open and can’t open my eyes to see who’s there, I go into full panic mode. The threat of blindness keeps my hands from the bandages (sight’s the last sense a predator should lose) but I paw in blind instinct at the bonds keeping me tethered in place. Even the remnants of my pride can’t completely suffocate a whimper of terror; I cower back towards the edge of the bed as footsteps relentlessly approach. If this was Tucker he’d have spoken to me at once – however much of a fool it makes me, I trust him that much. Therefore this isn’t Tucker, and there isn’t a soul I know who’d pass up the chance of hurting me while I'm defenceless.

Fight would always have been my preferred option, but too many months of inactivity and medication have sapped almost every bit of my strength; even if I weren’t tied to this bloody bed, I’ve hardly the strength to stand up, let alone fight. The intruder stops beside me, and I know I will have to fight anyway as the option for flight has been taken away from me – it’ll be a short fight and a losing one but it’s all I have. A rush of adrenaline comes to my rescue. Thrusting aside the whimper (as if whimpering ever saved any of _my_ victims!), the last instinct of the damned takes over. Though the eyes that might have reinforced the message are hidden, I play the only card I have left in my hand; startling even myself by how threatening it sounds even now, I growl low and fiercely in my throat, trying to warn the enemy away.

"Hey," a soft voice soothes, "Hey."

I know that voice, and I know its owner has reason to hurt me – more reasons than I could possibly remember. Lying here, I’ve remembered quite a lot of them, and for all that I berate myself ferociously for the coward I must be to have shown my fear so nakedly, God knows I’ll have no right to complain when she takes revenge just for those. That, of course, is what she’s here for.

Her tone doesn’t change. "Hey, it's all right." Fucking liar – as if I’m going to believe that! Don’t I know how the routine goes, soothing the prisoner into a false sense of security before the fun starts? Softening them up, making them believe they’re safe before the first fist crashes into the relaxing belly?

A touch on my shoulder makes me yelp in fright, and in my extremity I fall completely into my wolf conditioning. I whip my head around trying to bite, but blinded as I am my teeth snap shut on empty air. She tries a couple more times to touch me. I snap and snarl frantically into the darkness, writhing on the bed, doing my best to keep her at bay. It won’t work forever of course, she’ll get me sooner or later, but at least I can have the dignity of putting up what pathetically little resistance I can still muster.

Then she grabs me by the head. Holding me on either side of my face, her fingers gripping my hair, disregarding the teeth that snap and snap again on empty air between her wrists. I reach up, trying to paw her away, but I’m too weak. My hands slide on her arms, too feeble to grip, let alone hurt.

My entire body is trembling with tension. She’s going to hurt me. Her thumbs are in almost perfect position. One jab inward, and my eyes – my _eyes–!_

Then something brushes against my nose.

When I don't respond, it happens again, and I realise she's _rubbing noses_ with me.

Then I feel it. She licks my mouth.

I freeze, utterly confused. She hasn't hurt me – yet. She licks my mouth again, gently, and I can’t help it: I begin panting, overwhelmed by a hope I daren’t acknowledge, let alone grasp.

Once more, and then I lick her back. A quick, panic-stricken dab, whipping my tongue back before it can be bitten; still not daring to believe.

"That's it," she says encouragingly. "You're okay."

I pant at her again, still too frightened to even be grateful that she hasn’t hurt me.

"Do you remember when we used to cuddle on _Enterprise_?" she asks.

I answer with a soft whine that wavers like that of a scared puppy, wishing with all my soul that I had the use of my eyes. No-one knows better than I do that words can lie, voices can lie, but this woman’s eyes were windows whose curtains were never closed against me even when the only thing they held was terror of what I was going to do to her next. I do remember the cuddles, of course, and now in this abyss of loneliness and powerlessness the memory of them is painful, but words won’t serve or save me here; I’m too far into the darkness for such complexities.

"I'd like to do that again," she says. "And you look like you could use a cuddle right now."

 _‘I’d like to do that again’?_ There were times when I said that to her, as I said it to most of my victims, and I was never talking about cuddling. As for looking like I could use a cuddle, presumably that’s much the same thing as ‘you look like you’re about to piss yourself’, so I suppose I know what that looks like well enough, though it’s been more years than I care to remember since I saw the expression in a mirror.

I can feel the warm moistness of her breath on my face, she’s that close. She trusts me not to bite, and I don’t. Her thumbs move, but they only stroke softly across my temples, a small repeated caress that after the first rush of fear I find soothing.

I want her to like me. I want her not to hurt me. So I lick her mouth again, very timidly.

Very slowly, she creeps up onto the bed and snuggles close.

I lick her mouth once more, grateful for her kindness. And daring – daring, for the first time, to touch hope.

When I am myself again, I am weeping in Liz Cutler's arms. She is threading her fingers through my hair and shushing me. I am too utterly shattered to even feel ashamed.


	4. 16-20

**Chapter Sixteen**

**Vulcan Revelations**

_Commodore Charles Tucker III_

“Sonofabitch!”

I’m tired.

No, can that: I’m _exhausted._ After a day like today, you’d think I’d just fall into bed and into something nearer a coma than sleep.

No. It’s not happening. Not at all.

It’s not like it’s one of those days when you’re wondering whether you’re going to sleep at all. That can really fuck things up, but this wasn’t one of them. Right up till the moment my head hit the pillow I was absolutely sure I was going to go out like a light-bulb. The bed was nicely made, the covers clean and sweet-smelling, I was fresh from the shower and so far – so far, at least – everything was coming together. (Though with Mad Mal now added to my list of worries, that situation was pretty well _guaranteed_ to change, and sooner rather than later.)

So why the fuck am I lying here staring into the dark like sleep is something that happens to _other_ people?

Mama used to have an explanation for it. ‘Over-tiredness’. I’m not sure there’s any real medical science behind that, I’ve never had any cause to ask about it because it’s never happened to me before, but it’s happening now. I guess so much has been going on that it’s hard for my mind to shut down and let me sleep. 

It doesn't help matters that I'm actually excited about tomorrow for a change. Even the thought of having to talk with Rostov about his budding romance with a woman under his command isn't enough to sour it, because I finally have some _good_ news for my team and a surprise for Kelby. I can't remember the last time I was actually looking forward to going to work in the morning, but I'd bet every last credit I have that it was sometime before General Chaos hit the deck plating in my shuttle bay just over a year ago.

T’Pol is lying beside me, and at a guess she’s already asleep. If I was on my own I’d probably toss and turn a bit, trying to get comfortable, but one of the problems about sharing a bed (especially with someone you sort of want to like you) is that you don’t want to disturb them with your restlessness. So though I do turn over once or twice, I try to keep it as stealthy as possible.

It doesn’t work.

I’m no nearer sleep than I ever was.

I turn onto my back and stare at the ceiling. If I’m not going to sleep, I may as well get up and do some work.

As noiselessly as I can, I slide one leg out of the bed and roll over ready to get up.

“You require sleep,” says a quiet voice beside me. “Your mental performance will be below optimum if you do not conform to the standard Human requirement.”

“Yeah, tell me something I _don’t_ know,” I growl. 

There’s a short, puzzled silence. “That the principal ingredient of plomeek soup is the _bek_ grain?” she ventures at last.

You’d think that having spent however many years of her life around Humans she’d have gotten a hold of the idiom by now, but apparently not.

“What I _mean_ is, I _know_ I should be getting some sleep!” I pick up my pillow, punch it and slam it down on the bed again, for all the good that’s going to do. 

"Yes, I realize that," she replies steadily.

I flop over and glare at her – or the outline of her, I should say. There’s just enough ambient light for me to make out her silhouette in the darkness.

"Then why did you…?" It hits me like a hammer in the head. I've _seen_ plomeeks growing in the section of the hydroponics bay that I allocated to the Vulcan conscripts back around the time I had Kelby assigned to the station. That's when I asked Chef to start making plomeek soup and other Vulcan foods for T'Pol and the others from time to time. The soup Chef makes usually has some kind of root vegetables in it and some greens, but grain? My lily-white ass! I am so taken aback I snort aloud. 

"You were makin' a joke!" The realization is so startling that for a moment I forget my irritation with insomnia.

She inclines her head affirmatively, but says, "I apologize if it was inappropriate."

"No, that's all right," I tell her. "I just never realized Vulcans had a sense of humor!"

"Most of us do," she admits. "I believe it is what Humans would consider exceedingly…dry."

"I'll just bet," I say, amused and delighted by this new revelation. 

"Vulcan _is_ a desert planet," she reminds me.

I snort again, and then I can't help myself. She's not laugh-out-loud funny, but I chuckle for a good minute or two.

"Keep this up, an' I'm gonna have to start callin' you Chuckles," I tell her when I can speak again.

"I would prefer you _not,_ " she says, her tone quietly emphatic and slightly mortified.

I have one more little laugh left in me, then I tell her, "Relax darlin', that was just _me_ makin' a joke. Do you know what a clown is?" 

"A comic entertainer in human culture and that of some other species, often dressed in an outrageous or traditional costume and wearing exaggerated makeup."

"Well, Chuckles is a common name for a clown, an' the whole point of a clown is to make people laugh," I explain. "You've done that for me when I really needed it. So I was teasin' you that I'd start callin' you Chuckles."

I'm sure there are those who would call _me_ a clown. I'm one of those people who normally jokes around frequently, even when I'm not feeling particularly jolly myself. It's so much a part of my personality that it happens automatically. But for T'Pol, a Vulcan, to share that side of herself with me makes me happy in ways I can't even begin to explain.

Too soon she brings me back to reality.

"I was hoping to help you relax," she says. "You are having difficulty sleeping. For what reason?"

"Damned if I know," I grumble, turning onto my back again. “I’m overtired or somethin’. I can’t relax. I want to, but I just can’t.”

She must be tired too, but she can catch up on whatever she needs tomorrow – I’ve got to be up and in full working order for the staff meeting and whatever hurls itself at the fan afterwards. I know I’ve said that intimacy is down to her, but the clock’s counting down relentlessly towards the early hours of the morning, and I really do need to relax. Besides, although sex would definitely calm me down, I’m … well, that’s not what I need right now.

“You would like me to perform neuropressure on you,” she states calmly, sitting up. “You will need to remove your shirt.”

Normally I sleep in the buff, but I kind of thought it might make things a bit easier – at least to begin with – if the two of us wore clothes when we’re in bed now this ‘intimacy rule’ is in operation. That way there’s less chance of skin-to-skin contact, because I know just how easy it is for a spark to become a blaze, and good resolutions are easy to make and hard to keep when you’ve a pair of nipples pressing into your back and Li'l Woody Tucker wakes up and wants to go spelunking. 

She probably doesn’t put all that much faith in me keeping my word on that score, but I’m damn well going to try, and if wearing pajamas helps me hang on to my self-control, well, it’s a small price to pay. At least till I get used to the fact that I can no longer just reach over and push her thighs apart and take what I want.

It doesn’t take me more than a few seconds to strip the shirt off, and she kneels behind me where I sit on the edge of the bed and starts feeling around the knots of tension at the base of my neck. Almost before I’m ready for it she’s attacking the first node, and I feel this indescribable mixture of pain and relief radiate out from where her thumbs are pressing inward, manipulating with ruthless precision.

I’ve had massages in parlors, at least some of which were performed by professional masseuses who weren’t doing it as a preliminary to getting my rocks off. But none of them were even close to the effect that T'Pol can achieve, and within moments I’m starting to purr like a pussy-cat as I feel the tension being bullied out of me.

She has her fingers on my collar-bones, her thumbs planted deep in my trapezius muscles, when she suddenly pauses.

“There is one other remedy for the inability to sleep,” she says, a bit hesitantly.

“Mhm?” I’m not particularly sleepy yet, but I’m definitely more relaxed, and I don’t want her to stop.

She gets the message, and starts again. Her thumbs move in small, strong strokes against what feels like a knot on either side. “I would understand – if you had reservations – about experimenting with it.”

“Well, that sort of depends what ‘it’ happens to be.” Languidly I imagine some kind of tantric sex thing. It’s not sleep, but it’s getting more appealing – definitely it’s getting more appealing. I can feel the warmth of her body behind mine, and now and again the silk of her pajamas whispers across my bare skin. Mostly around the areas of my shoulder blades, and I don’t need it written down on a PADD to know what’s brushing against me.

“It is … not something Vulcans would usually reveal to others. It is a practice, an _intimate_ practice, usually carried out between … mated couples.”

Memory slithers into my mind. Her half-defiant, half-triumphant face in _Enterprise_ ’s Main Engineering, as she bragged about having taken control of my mind when I was in bed with her, making the most of that Vulcan ‘pon farr’ thing. ‘Saving her life’, she’d said, though it hadn’t taken that much persuasion to get me on board; knowing she wouldn’t look at me twice at any other time hadn’t stopped me from fantasizing practically every night about getting hold of her luscious body and fucking it every which way.

The memory stops the relaxation as though I’ve been plugged into the mains. I thrust up and away from her, trying to fight down the anger I feel surging up at me all over again at the memory of how she’d used me as surely as I was using her – and she sure as hell wasn’t saving _my_ life, whatever other motives she may have had. On the contrary, she’d not only exposed _Enterprise_ to danger that finally proved deadly, at a personal level she’d brought Reed sniffing around for treason, and undoubtedly with his mind set on tracing it all the way to me. He might not have had anything like the power then that he got hold of later, but he had absolute authority to track down treachery to the Empire and deal with it – brutally and fast.

I spin and glare at her. “You’re talkin’ about that mind-meldin’ thing you did on me before, right?”

“Yes.” Her hands clasping together in her lap are the only giveaway of her anxiety. “I misused it that day, and I wronged you, for which I apologize. That is not what melding is supposed to achieve.”

“An’ you expect me to just let you do it _again?_ So what sort of command were you thinkin’ of implantin’ this time? Hand you the _Sirius_ an' the codes of the Imperial security orbiters? Givin’ you a chance to do another strafin’ run like the Xindi?”

Her color fluctuates a bit. “I would not do that.”

“You bet your sweet little ass you won’t. ‘Cause you won’t get the chance.” I throw myself into the chair by my desk. Not only am I further from sleep than I was to start with, but the memory of the Xindi attack has torn open my grieving for Lizzie. And, for some reason I don’t really want to analyze, I’m savage with disappointment. I thought T'Pol and I … well, I thought there was the start of something, even if I’m not sure what and I was probably kidding myself even with that.

Fear curdles in my stomach. Do I have to be awake for her to do that meld thing? Could she have done it again already, gotten hold of me in my sleep so I didn’t even know? Have I already been transformed into a sleeper agent with any number of commands dormant in my subconscious, just waiting for the right time to turn me into a one-man demolition squad?

“Commander.”

For a moment I don’t answer. I’m too angry and heartsick. “What?”

“I can understand your resentment, and your mistrust is logical. But ask yourself if it would be logical of me to work against a master who has given me the nearest status a Vulcan can have to freedom – a master who has, for reasons of his own and with no external mandate, decided to give me back my dignity.”

“You tell me. I don’t know what you could have dreamed up for me to do. You damn near got all of us killed last time for your goddamned rebel plot!”

“There _is_ no plot.” Her voice is calm, though her fingers are tightly clasped. “I am a slave, but that is inevitable for all non-Humans now. That being so, apart from anything else it must be in my best interests to safeguard a good master rather than attempt to bring about his downfall – for the likelihood of my prospering afterwards would be remote. Admittedly I might _possibly_ be granted my freedom, but what would that achieve? Humans would never accept me as an equal, and my own people would rightly despise me as a tool of the Empire.

"Also, it is becoming more apparent by the day that the only hope left for my people now is to continue to survive within the Empire," she says. "To weaken the Empire at this juncture would be to endanger my own people. And finally, as you are one of only a small number of Humans I have ever witnessed showing any of us any kind of compassion or concern, I would be foolish to endanger you." 

I’m kind of chilled hearing her laying it out so dispassionately, but she’s a Vulcan so this is what she does, this is how she works. At least now it makes sense. A couple months ago she’d have had a whole lot more reason to take up any plot going that would bring about my downfall, when I was just the bastard who treated her like a whore I didn’t have to pay.

Well. So if she’s telling the truth (OK, it’s a big ‘if’), and this meld thing isn’t actually supposed to be used to make people sleepwalk into treason and basically suicide, it won’t hurt to find out a bit more about it. After all, I’m sure as hell not going to get to sleep.

“Well, go on,” I growl. “What else is it for? This meldin’ thing?”

Her eyes are beautiful. Clear brown pools. I remind myself they looked just like that when she was telling me about this Vulcan sexual cycle, and that if she didn’t get a man to fuck her she’d die of the hormone overload.

Talk about every Christmas and birthday you ever had, all rolled into one.

“You are aware that I meditate every day.”

Of course I am. Although till I joined Starfleet Mr. Velik was the only Vulcan I’d ever met, I knew even then that he had to spend so much time every evening meditating – something to do with putting his thoughts in order, and all Vulcans did it, like brushing your teeth before you go to bed.

“Meditation is deeply calming,” she goes on, at my irritable nod. “Mated couples sometimes share the ritual, and open their minds to one another. It strengthens their bond and allows them to relax. This is what I was proposing – if you could overcome your misgivings sufficiently to allow me to attempt it.”

Well. There’s an old saying ‘Once bitten, twice shy’, and if ever a situation seemed to call for applying it, this would surely be the one. 

Still. If she wanted to trap me again, she could do it the same way she’d done it last time – she could _already_ have done it, and left me completely ignorant of the danger. And she’s right that my protection is probably the best chance she has of any kind of a decent life. Would she deliberately put that at risk?

“You think you can really help me, doin’ this?” I ask, frowning and still doubtful whether to trust her at all.

“Yes.” Her dignity doesn’t descend to pleading. It’s an offer, and it’s there for me to take or leave, whichever I please.

I think about it a bit longer. Fact is, I’ve already given her enough rope to hang me twenty times over of my own free will (just allowing her to know _1984_ existed could have gotten me shot out of hand), and given her intelligence I’m damn sure she could have found some way to pass it on if she’d wanted to. If that had happened I’d already be in a detention cell, awaiting trial, while she’d be held at a safe distance from me as the prime witness for the prosecution.

It could still be going to happen. I could wake up tomorrow morning to face my arrest for treason to the Empire; but they can only kill me once and I've given her plenty to use against me already, if that's her intent. But I’m so tired my head’s aching, and I really and truly need some way to get to sleep.

“OK," I finally agree, "but don't you think for one goddamn minute that I won't take you down with me if I end up doin' somethin' treasonous an' get caught. I'll still be executed, slowly, most likely, but whatever I get, I’ll make sure they find a way to make it worse for you."

I regret the words even as I'm saying them, but I'm not going to tell her that. At the very least, she deserves my honesty. As much as I would like things between us to be different, the memories from _Enterprise_ still have me feeling angry and mistrustful; and things between us, they _can’t_ change, if we're not honest with each other.

"Tell me what I have to do.”

She turns herself around and sits cross-legged on the bed, facing the head of it. Then she points to the space opposite herself, presumably meaning I have to sit on the pillow.

I’m still not sure that I’m not making the biggest mistake of my life. But I don’t say anything as I climb onto the bed and settle myself, also cross-legged and so close that our knees almost touch.

Her gaze is wide and still. As she lifts her hand and spreads her fingers to touch my face, I can’t help tensing. Memory flutters, and I almost know the words before she speaks them.

_“My mind to your mind…”_

=/\=

Sleep, fathoms deep, with Vulcan arms wrapped around me.

So deep that not even dreams can find us. 

* * *

**Chapter Seventeen**

**Morning Meetings**

_Commander Richard Kelby_

I take a deep breath and walk into the commodore's private conference room. I've been here dozens of times over the past year, sometimes more than once in the same day, and it’s never intimidated me as it does now. This is the first time I have been invited to the Morning Meeting, the earliest hour of the alpha-shift day, which the commodore usually reserves for his department heads.

I've arrived a little bit early. Commodore Tucker doesn't stand on ceremony. He usually begins when everyone has arrived – regardless of the scheduled time – unless someone is late, in which case he starts on schedule, without them. 'Time isn't just money, Rich, time is life. Don't waste mine an' I won't waste yours.' Of course, I'm not going to be late, but I don't want to be the one everybody is waiting on at the appointed hour, either, so early it is.

"Mornin', Rich," I’m greeted as I walk through the door. It's just the commodore, sitting at the table alone reading over a PADD, a cup of coffee and a plate of pastry, fruit, and sliced meats and cheeses beside him. "The others'll be here shortly. Help yourself to some breakfast, an' sit down. We don't have assigned seats."

He points to a small side table where a coffee urn is merrily burbling away, filling the room with the most heavenly aroma. It’s surrounded by a tray of pastries; a bowl of luscious-looking fresh fruit; carafes of apple, orange, and cranberry juice; a jug of milk; a pot of tea; and a charcuterie board with half a dozen different kinds of cheeses, as many sliced meats, melba toast, several varieties of crackers, cherry tomatoes, olives, nuts, dried apricots, dates, figs, and three different kinds of spreads.

My surprise at the range of choices must show on my face because the commodore chuckles, and says, "Don't worry, it won't go to waste. Once we're done here, someone from the galley will come in an' collect the leftovers. They'll top up the juices, fill in the holes in the pastry tray an' that platter of nibbles, an' move it to one of the break rooms – Chef keeps a rotatin' schedule so everybody feels the love on a regular basis. It'll be gone, right down to the salt off the nuts by ten a.m."

"Boy, you can sure tell this place is an engineering facility," I blurt out the first thing that comes to my mind.

With a slightly puzzled frown, the commodore asks, "How's that?"

"Always efficient," I smirk.

He grins back at me and says, "You bet your ass!"

Feeling a little more relaxed since he was amused by my joke, I take a plate and select a puffed pastry with some kind of jammy concoction in the middle, a small bunch of grapes, and some crackers, meat, and cheese from the charcuterie board.

"Try the tomatoes," the commodore recommends, "they're not hydroponic. They were grown in real dirt an' ripened in the sun back on Earth."

"Morning, Chief," Mike Rostov, the dark-haired, amiable Chief of Decommissioning and Salvage, says coming through the door as I put my plate, tomatoes included, down on the table and turn back to the coffee urn. "Rich, how ya doin'?"

We exchange greetings, and I get Mike a cup of coffee while he fills his plate, though I leave it to him to add the cream and sugar. Like the commodore, he has his own recommendations on what's good in the breakfast spread, so I add a rolled-up, tissue paper thin slice of Virginia ham and some pimento spread on a cracker to my plate. Now that we apparently have a quorum, the commodore puts his reading aside as Mike and I sit. I take a seat to the commodore's left, but at the far end of the table. Mike sits in the middle seat on the left.

"How'd you sleep last night, Michael?" 

It's an oddly personal question for the commodore to ask his Head of Salvage with a third person in the room, and his tone implies something more than idle small talk. Not wanting to seem intrusive, I focus on my plate and try to pretend I'm not there. The tomatoes are excellent. Sweet and juicy and flavorful, unlike anything grown on the station. 

It occurs to me that now is not the time to thank the commodore for the recommendation.

"I slept fine, Chief," Rostov replies innocently enough. "Why do you ask?"

"No reason in particular," is the response. "Only when I saw you around 21:00 last night, you didn't seem anywhere close to windin' down for the evenin' an' you weren't headin' for your quarters."

It's one of the station's worst kept secrets that Mike Rostov and Julie Massaro, his second in command in Salvage, have recently become an item, and now I think I know why I am here. The commodore doesn't like to meddle in the personal lives of his people. So long as they remain professional on-duty, he tries to keep his nose out of their business as much as possible off-duty, but now that the Rostov-Massaro relationship has become common knowledge, he has to acknowledge it. I am his witness to whatever is said here and whatever he decides to do about it. I guess dealing with it in front of a grunt like me is his way of letting Mike save face as opposed to having to discuss his personal life in front of the other department heads.

"Oh, that was just drinks and a movie, Chief," Rostov says smoothly enough, though I'm sure we all know it's a lie. "Honest."

"You sure about that?" the commodore presses, not commenting on the irony of the appended 'honest', "'Cause if it's not, I have no problem shiftin' her to a different department so she'll be out of your chain of command an' free to do what you want."

Actually, that's a blatant lie, too, I realize as I note that the pimento spread clashes with the slightly sweet nuttiness of the cracker. It would go better on something more buttery and the cracker would marry well with some kind of tangy fruit spread and a sharp cheese. 

Transferring officers from one department to another is probably harder here than anywhere else in the Fleet. The commodore's command style has filtered all the way down to the lowest ranking crews assigned to sweeping the corridors and cleaning the toilets here on Jupiter Station. Granted most lower-ranking personnel seek opportunities for advancement and personal improvement, but by and large everyone – even the alien conscripts, to some extent – are content with their current positions and not overly-eager to change assignments just for the sake of change. Far from a lack of ambition, for we are all eager to do our jobs well and earn the commodore's approval, it's more a case of 'the grass is perfectly green enough right here, thank you, I don't need to try any of yours.' While this is better than one can usually hope for in an Imperial facility, it also makes it almost impossible to reassign Julie Massaro to a position that befits her rank and experience without putting someone else's nose out of joint.

It says a lot about what the chief thinks of Rostov that he would even make the offer.

"Honest, Chief, we're just friends," Mike insists with an awkward smile, but he doesn't appear as uncomfortable discussing his love life in front of me as one might imagine. 

The commodore nods thoughtfully, and says, "Well, do yourself a favor, then, Michael, an' make sure _she_ knows that. It's not an easy conversation to have, I know, but the longer you wait, the harder it will be; an' if you wait too long, she's liable to feel you were leadin' her on from the start. Then she'll feel humiliated an' angry, an' I'll _have_ to transfer her to keep the peace. If it comes to that the only reward in it for _her_ will be gettin' away from you, an' all _you_ 'll get out of it is a reprimand in your file – an' you know how much I'd hate to have to do that."

It's puzzling, sometimes, what the commodore decides to care about. I've never before had a CO who made any attempt to enforce the non-fraternization rules – or even obey them– unless the inevitable lover's quarrel or breakup turned into an all-out brawl on duty; but the commodore simply won't tolerate his officers engaging in intimate relationships with those under their direct command, however willing the two parties might be. He says the subordinate isn't truly free to make any decisions in a relationship with a superior in their direct chain of command; and though I've never asked him about it (and never will) he doesn't seem to appreciate or even be aware of the irony and hypocrisy of his owning a Vulcan sex slave.(Of course, all aliens are slaves now, and therefore not entitled to the same consideration even the lowliest human is granted, but as I remember, he and T'Pol had some … thing … going on back on _Enterprise_. The commodore doesn't seem the type to be cruel just because he can, so maybe, making her his personal property was his way of protecting her from the kind of dangers and mistreatment regular slaves endure on a daily basis.) On the other hand, at least with the station's permanent personnel, he couldn't seem to care less about the conventions of military courtesy that other commanders seem to depend on to maintain order and discipline. On Utopia Planitia, I once spent an hour in an agony booth for not dropping my flux coupler to turn and salute the station commander as he was passing behind me in the corridor where I was scrambling to get ahead of a cascade failure of the EPS grid that would have left that entire section of the facility without life support if I hadn't stopped it. Commodore Tucker is just as happy to have us keep working as if he isn't there, and I have even heard him joking with the new recruits they send us every six weeks or so that his arm would get tired if we all saluted him as often as the rulebooks expect.

Mike nods and says seriously, "Aye, sir. Consider it done."

Tucker nods back. "Good man." 

Then they both glance briefly at me, at which point it hits me like a club over the head that I am being used by _both_ of them. I nod slightly, understanding now that it's all that is required of me. Whether Mike was expecting the commodore to confront him about Julie, I don't know, but he's more than happy to have had the conversation with me in the room. Now, if there is ever any question, I am a third, disinterested party who can confirm that Commodore Tucker confronted Commander Rostov about his involvement with Lieutenant Massaro; that Rostov declared the relationship platonic; that the commodore offered the opportunity for them to move that relationship to the next level; and that his offer was declined as unnecessary. Everybody's ass is covered, and, true to the commodore's image as a gentleman, the name of the young lady in question was never mentioned. 

Granted, in the Imperial Fleet, a woman's honor is hardly a matter of concern for anyone, but it's charming all the same that Commodore Tucker and Commander Rostov would respect the young woman enough to want to protect it. It's just one more reason that they are both so well-liked.

As fate would have it, we're all saved from having to segue awkwardly to another topic by the arrival of the other department heads. First there's the tall, lanky, red-haired Commander Morris 'Finicky' Fincke, who will correct you, "It's FIN-key, like a fish's fin and a key in a lock," if you botch his name. I suppose it's fitting that the fastidious Fincke would be Chief of Sanitation. Who better to put in charge of housekeeping than the guy who dusts his chair off with a pocket square before sitting, even when he's covered from head to foot in soot and grime, as he has been for the past several days since he's been leading the crew cleaning up what used to be Sickbay. He's not a neat-freak, _per se_ , but he has a very rigid sense of order that makes him ideal for his position.

Then there's Commander Terry Virts, Chief of Maintenance and Repair, an Afro-Canadian. I don't know much about Virts. Except for an e-mail I sent him about a flickering light in my quarters, the most communication I have had with him is a nod in the hall, and he’s not much for smiling, though when one does appear it takes over his entire face. But that light was fixed by the end of the shift the same day I sent the e-mail. Whoever did the work even took the time to clean the plastic panel that covered it. In comparison to my experiences elsewhere in the Imperial Fleet, the service his department provides seems second to none.

The commodore's gorgeous blonde PA, Lieutenant Eloise Chastain, is next. She initially bypasses the breakfast buffet to set up a small wireless video monitor at the empty space at the foot of the table. Then she comes back to the end of the line and fills a plate. Sitting in the chair to the commodore's immediate right, she says something about all the updates having been added and the doctor standing by.

Following Eloise is Major Austin Burnell, Head of Security. Tawny-haired and elegant, he’s not what you’d call ‘built’, but he has a presence that makes you step out of his way, for all that he rarely raises his voice. His presence surprises me for a moment, as he’s the only senior officer in the room who is not an engineer, but then I remember this is a meeting of department heads, not chief engineers. I have a fleeting urge to laugh as some random thought about the paleface amongst a tribe of Native American Indians darts through my mind, and I have to take a quick gulp of my coffee to suppress it as that is the precise moment when Burnell sits opposite me and our eyes meet. His are a vivid green color, I’ve never noticed that before, but it’s not the first time that meeting them makes me feel vaguely guilty, even though I’ve done nothing that I know of to feel guilty about. When I think about it, in the wake of an explosion that took out sections of multiple decks, including our entire sickbay, and killed more than three dozen people, Burnell's presence makes quite a lot of sense at this meeting.

Bringing up the rear is Commander Anna Hess, Chief of Manufacturing and Construction, who is second only to Commodore Tucker in being my friend and mentor. I'm sure she was considerably less than pleased to find out I was being assigned to her team when I first arrived here just over a year ago, but she never let on. She just patiently taught me all the things I should have known by now, but didn't; praised me when I did well; and corrected and encouraged me when I failed. As the commodore taught me how to think and plan and act around people, Anna taught me how to work in an efficient and organized manner, as a proper engineer should. When I think about everything I learned from the two of them, I can only shake my head in pity at the ignorant jackass I was before coming here.

Much as I admire her, though, and she’s an attractive woman with beautiful chestnut curls and a pair of bright blue eyes above a pretty mouth, I know Anna is not perfect. She has her moods, and she has a temper, and for some reason, Mike Rostov, more than anybody else on the station, manages to get away with prodding both. When he greets her with a cartoonishly cheerful, "Good moooooorning, Anna!" her response is an unintelligible mutter with a distinct tone of profanity.

"What's the matter, love?" Burnell teases with a smirk. "Don’t you know the early bird gets the worm?"

"Who the fuck wants worms for breakfast?" she mumbles, under her breath, but still just loud enough for the room to hear.

"Mind your manners, Anna," the commodore warns jokingly. "We have comp'ny."

She glances at me out of the corner of her eye and grumbles, "That's today?"

Virts, who has taken the seat beside Burnell, gives me a slight smile. "Don't let her fool you, Commander Kelby. She knows perfectly well it's today. It was her suggestion to call you in."

Settling into the chair to my right as I sit up straighter, Hess admonishes, "Don't make me regret it."

"What a way to encourage the kid, Anna!" Fincke laughs at her. "What do you do when he screws up? Call him into your office and beat him with a hyperspanner?"

In the midst of the good-natured jibes, I know better than to volunteer that such forms of corporal punishment were not always considered out of line in my previous posts.

Sighing as she stirs her coffee, Anna says, "Forgive me, Rich. What these jokers know and you probably don't is that I'm not fit for human company until I've had my first hit of caffeine for the day. Give me ten minutes and a decent cup of Java…" Her mouth drops open in a wide yawn that she seems almost to forget to cover with her hand. "… and I'll be a new woman."

"An' now that we're all settled," Commodore Tucker says to the table, bringing an end to the banter, "let's get started. Eloise?"

Eloise, I have learned in my year here on Jupiter Station, is a miracle of efficiency second only to a well-tuned warp drive. Commodore Tucker may be the Commanding Officer, but it’s the clerical staff, headed by Eloise, who really run the place. As often as not, when someone has a problem or needs something, the Chief will approve a course of action, and then direct the person in need to 'see Eloise' to actually make it happen.

Now, she takes a remote control from her pocket, turns on a screen behind the commodore, and then turns on the portable screen she set up at the end of the table. The meeting agenda appears on the screen behind the commodore, and the florid face of a jowly, balding man with an impressive moustache appears on the one at the foot of the table. He is gazing off somewhere to his right, entering data into a PADD, nodding, and muttering to himself and doesn't seem to have a clue that he is being observed.

"Hello? Doctor Loo-caas?" Eloise calls sweetly. Her melodic, faintly French accent makes it sound almost like she is singing his name. She and the commodore share an amused smirk.

He jumps, harrumphs, adjusts his necktie, and says, "Eloise, m'dear! I'm sorry. I was momentarily distracted by some _verrrry_ interesting data while I was waiting."

"No worries, Doc," the commodore answers for Eloise. "Glad you could join us. Just to confirm, you are alone in a secure room, correct?"

The doctor looks a little bit offended when he replies, "Of course I am, Commodore." Then he smiles broadly in a way that stretches his magnificent bristly moustache across his face in a way that makes me think of a walrus and adds, "And congratulations on the promotion, by the way. I'd heard of it through the grapevine, you know, but this is the first chance I've had to tell you."

"Thanks, Doc," the commodore says politely, but for some reason doesn't seem all that pleased by the mention of his promotion. "An' thanks, too, for agreein' to come back to Jupiter Station. We're gonna need you.

"First thing, I guess I should explain the rules of order for our guests who haven't been here before," the commodore continues as if I’m not the only one. "Generally, there aren't any. I just go through the agenda, fillin' in the details that aren't listed in the bullet points. If y'all have any concerns or questions, just throw them out there. We're all civil an' respectful enough to make sure everybody gets a chance to be heard, but if a discussion gets heated or a disagreement arises, I usually just take matters in hand an' shut you all up so I can call on you one at a time. Ordinarily your ideas would get a fair discussion here an' now, but for obvious reasons, we all have a hell of a lot of more pressin' business at the moment, so please don't be offended if I decide to just make note of your contributions today. Eloise keeps the minutes, which appear on the screen behind me as we speak, so you can see that what you have to say will be recorded, an' we'll discuss it again in the next few days or weeks, dependin' on the urgency of the matter.

As if to demonstrate, Eloise enters a line above **Item 1** on the agenda, _Cdre Tucker reviews Rules of Order._

"Does that about cover it?"

As the commodore looks around the table, the others nod assent and I nod my understanding.

"Great. Now, for those of you who may not recognize him, Doctor Jeremy Lucas here was our CMO before Phlox was transferred in nearly two years ago," the commodore goes on. "He was my first choice the first time I chose him, an' he is again now. Those of you who know him surely know how lucky we are to have him, an' those of you who don't will find out soon enough.

"Just so the formalities are attended to, Doc, let me make some introductions." 

These start with Burnell, who, along with Virts and myself, is unfamiliar with the doctor. He seems on friendly enough terms with the others, respecting the commodore, and, though they exchange only a few words, clearly doting on Eloise and Anna like daughters.

"I look forward to working with all of you soon," the doctor concludes.

"'Soon' will be in about a week, Doc," the commodore tells him, "which moves us on to our next point on the agenda. You'll have to pack quick, 'cause you'll be movin' to the _Livin'ston_ before lunch."

"Before lunch!" Doctor Lucas squawks. "But I have experiments running and patients to…" 

"I'm sorry, Doc," the commodore apologizes sincerely even as he cuts the protest off. "I know it's a helluva short notice, an' I know you're one of those medical types who has a real protective streak for his patients, but right now, the Imperial Fleet's biggest an' busiest facility is without a CMO or even a Sickbay. We've been managin' all right with our first-aid kits, but if anyone gets seriously hurt or someone brings a nasty bug onto the station, we'll be up shit's creek. 

"We need you, an' we need you here last week. So, in my mornin' conference call with the Empress, which we've been havin' daily since the explosion, I requested an' she approved us to use the _Livin'ston_ as our Sickbay until we replace the one Phlox an' his merry band of mad scientists blew up. By the end of this meetin', Admiral Grady will have orders to rendezvous with the _Livin'ston_ ASAP to transfer you.

"I really am sorry for anything you have to leave hangin', Jeremy, but we're all just lucky Admiral Grady wasn’t long out of space dock with the _Sherman’s March_. A couple days more, an' he'd have been runnin' silent for months."

Doctor Lucas looks gravely back at us from the screen, then nods sharply.

"Of course, Commodore, you're right, and I apologize for not recognizing the concern you feel about being without trained medical personnel," he says. "Often it is all too easy to focus on the important things right under one's nose and forget the urgent matters waiting just at arm's length." Giving an impish smile, he says, “You have my word that I will be waiting at the airlock, with bells and a veil on, when we dock with the _Livingston_."

The commodore tries to stifle a laugh at the image of the portly physician decked out like a belly dancer and ends up snorting, giving the rest of us permission to chuckle. 

"I appreciate your enthusiasm, Jeremy, but I think I'd much prefer your usual shirt an' tie an' a lab coat."

The doctor nods and winks at us all. "Aye, aye, Commodore, but you'll be missing one hell of a show."

The _Livingston_ , I know is a hospital ship scheduled for decommissioning. Named for a famous physician from about three hundred years ago whose do-gooder tendencies have been forgiven by Imperial Historians because he was also an ardent imperialist and expansionist credited with single-handedly opening Africa up to European Colonization, the _Livingston_ does much what her namesake did in the many villages of Africa, though on a larger scale. When there is an outbreak of disease or a disaster causing large numbers of casualties on a conquered world, she, and other hospital ships like her, are dispatched to treat both the alien laborers and the humans who oversee them. Medicine and medical care, far from being the historical Livingston’s purpose and goal, were, from what I recall, merely the currency by which he paid his way on his travels throughout the continent. He would have just as easily used glass beads and blankets if they had been desirable to the natives, but his practice of medicine had the additional side effect of maintaining a strong and healthy pool of African slave labor Western Europe and the American South. The ship was due to be Mike Rostov's next project in the salvage yard, but I'm sure the commodore can easily find something else for Mike and his crew to do. More than likely, the first thing on the list will be processing the debris from the explosion as soon as the investigation is closed, which is likely to happen soon, if the grapevine is correct in that the cause of the disaster has been identified.

The _Sherman’s March_ , if I recall correctly, was named for Major General William Tecumseh Sherman's infamous March to the Sea during the American Civil War. The campaign was fought deep within enemy territory and without supply lines. The rapidly moving Union Army literally cleaved the South in two and broke the back of the Confederacy, confiscating what was needed as it marched through Georgia, and destroying the rest. From burning factories, farm houses, and crops in the field; to confiscating more than twenty thousand head of horses, mules, and cattle, and twenty _million_ pounds of grain and fodder to feed them; to literally ripping out railroad tracks, blowing up bridges and tunnels, and tearing down telegraph poles to destroy the infrastructure, Sherman's Army gave the world a refresher on what the words 'scorched earth' _really_ meant. Not since the Romans ploughed Carthage into the earth and sowed it with salt had an army wrought such vengeance on enemy non-combatants. With their communications and supply lines shattered, the homes they dreamt of going back to lying in ashes, and their children, wives, and sweethearts scattered like dandelion seeds in the wind, the Rebel Army lost both their material and psychological capacity to continue the fight. Less than four months later Lee surrendered to Grant in Virginia. About two weeks after that, Johnston surrendered ninety thousand men from the Army of Tennessee to Sherman, and two weeks later, Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederacy was captured. It says quite something that Sherman and his campaign are still remembered, almost three hundred years after what is now a fairly insignificant little war in the history of the Empire.

(I'm not really into military history, _per se,_ but I like to know the stories behind the names of the ships we send out to fight for our Empire, and the _Sherman's March_ is one of the most interesting and colorful.) 

In keeping with its namesake, the _I.S.S. Sherman's March_ is unique in the Imperial Fleet, a sledgehammer of a starship with a reputation for obliterating its opponents. A heavy cruiser with a crew of 150 and an equal contingent of MACOs, it's bristling with weapons and pregnant with bombs and torpedoes, equally effective at fighting a pitched battle against multiple enemies in open space or annihilating a planetary installation. Also like the original _Sherman's March,_ our starship often operates behind enemy lines, cutting off support for the front, taking what they need, and destroying what they leave behind. Her MACO boarding parties are mostly special ops teams with a genius for alien tech. From what's been reported on the news feeds, they can take over a ship, learn her systems, and space the crew within three days. Twice in the past eighteen months, Admiral Grady and his elite MACOs built small fleets of a dozen or so enemy vessels, and then turned them against the enemy from the rear flank, cutting off their retreat coinciding with an attack from the fore by a group of Imperial ships. I've no doubt a great many of the classified projects on Jupiter Station have had something to do with reverse engineering the alien tech the _Sherman's March_ has brought back from her sorties and finding a way to integrate it into Imperial ships.

As the commodore said, we were only able to get Doctor Lucas transferred now because the _Sherman's March_ is between missions, for once Grady goes behind enemy lines, he doesn't emerge for months at a time. 

"Now, before we move on to operational concerns, I just want to make sure we're all on the same page about exactly what was goin' on in our Sickbay, what happened to blow it all to hell, who was responsible, who was involved by or against their own free will, an' who we lost.

"Most importantly, the Empress has decided a BII investigation is not necessary."

There is a deflating sigh all around the table. The Bureau of Imperial Investigation, the Empire's civilian law-enforcement agency, has, by law, almost unlimited authority when it comes to interrogating subjects of the Empire. They have no requirement to show evidence that someone is connected to or has knowledge of a crime, no time limit on how long they can hold a person, no restriction on how long an individual interrogation session can last, and no enhanced techniques that are off limits to them. With the exception of the Empress and the Triad, no one falls outside their jurisdiction. The head of the BII, who seems to change more frequently than some people change socks, is probably the number five man in the government, after the Empress and the Triad, which I suppose makes him number two now that the Triad is gone. At the news that the BII will not be coming to Jupiter Station, even Major Burnell slumps in his chair for a moment. I suppose, being a MACO and our Security Chief, he's conducted at least a few interrogations himself, and knowing that their powers and jurisdiction exceed and supersede his own had to make a possible visit from a BII investigation team even more terrifying for him than it was for the rest of us.

"Terry, Austin, she was particularly pleased with your reports, an' has accepted them as written," the commodore continues proudly. "Moreover, gentlemen, she _strongly_ supports your suggestion that from now on, every classified project should be assigned an experienced engineer familiar with this station to supervise their maintenance needs an' special installations.

"In fact, with my encouragement, she has ordered _all_ classified projects put on hiatus until they're assigned someone to fill that position an’ their facilities within the station are inspected, so I need you two to get started on selectin' people who can pass the background checks an' get clearance to work in sensitive areas. The Empress has granted me temporary clearance to review the proposals of the projects currently operatin' on this station, so I can triage them an' come up with some kind of prioritized list for startin' them up again. 

"Terry, I need you to sit with Austin, right after this meetin', an' come up with a schedule for him to interview _all_ your people. Start with the most experienced first, an' include yourself on that list. Once you have that done, communicate the schedule to Eloise for my approval. Most of these projects won't require the full-time services of a maintenance engineer, so most people will probably be able to be assigned to two or three different projects. Still, that's gonna take some of Terry's people away from their duties.”

Looking at Fincke, the commodore continues, "Morris, I want you to give Eloise a list of people who can be assigned split shifts between Sanitation an' Maintenance, say about a third of each shift, an' make it a fair mix of experience an' ability levels; we can use this as an opportunity to cross-train some of the younger folks. I don't think Terry will need them every day, but I want them available when he does. I know that will leave _you_ shorthanded, Morris, an' I'm sorry about that, but, if you'll forgive the bad joke, shit rolls downhill."

Far from offended, Finicky laughs with the rest of us and says, "We'll manage, Commodore, at least for the short term, but when the plumbing starts backing up, it’s every man for himself."

"I figured you'd say somethin' like that," Tucker tells him in an appreciative tone, "so in the meantime, I'm gettin' you help for the long term. The Empress has approved an additional staff of up to twenty engineers for Sanitation and Maintenance combined. Until we can determine how many we actually need an' fill those slots, I'm authorized to approve up to two hours a day of paid overtime at time-an'-a-half on a voluntary, as-needed basis for all Maintenance an' Sanitation personnel, _providin'_ the specific job they do durin' the OT hours is clearly documented in their daily report. That option applies to you, too, gentlemen, but if I'm payin' you OT, I want you gettin' your hands dirty. No catchin' up on paperwork on company time; that's _my_ prerogative."

There is a shared chuckle around the table. The commodore's job nowadays consists _mostly_ of meetings and paperwork, but it is not uncommon to find him in the mess hall, a break room, or one of the lounges in the evening with a slice of pie, a glass of milk, and a stack of PADDs containing reports and proposals that require his review and approval. It’s common knowledge that he does this work in public areas of the station so that he’s accessible to crewmembers who might need to approach him with a problem, question, or concern during their off-hours; and it’s an unspoken _and unbroken_ rule that one does not disturb the commodore with so much as a 'hello' during these times unless one has a legitimate need.

It's at this point that the commodore turns around to study the agenda. He's been leaping from item to item like a drunken cricket, and Eloise has diligently kept up with him, filling in the blanks with the details he has discussed about the _Livingston_ , Doctor Lucas's imminent arrival, the cancelled BII investigation, the new engineering requirements for the classified projects, the promise of additional staff, the temporary overtime, and the related responsibilities he has assigned to Virts, Burnell, Fincke, and himself. 

Now he's muttering to himself about _forgettin' somethin', covered that, but did I…._

"Oh!" Apparently he has remembered, as he snaps his fingers. "Back to our temporary Sickbay for a moment," he says. "Michael, when the _Livin'ston_ gets here, I want it docked as close to the old Sickbay as possible. That means you're gonna have to move the _Fortress_ , son."

The _Fortress_ , of course, was Alpha’s ship. The name is perfectly descriptive even if it does lack the weight of history carried by the _Sherman’s March_ and the _Livingston._ Apart from her sheer size, which is at least twice that of our largest carriers, the secrets and stories she holds make her every bit the structure for which she is named. They say she’s built of a top-secret alloy that makes her nearly impenetrable to energy weapons. They say there are places where she can’t even dock because she’s so massive she wreaks havoc with the station’s orbital engines and grav generators. They say the crew who built her were subsequently beamed into space, their atoms scattered like dust on the stellar winds, to keep them from revealing her secrets. They say she has a dungeon, and I’ve even heard there’s a quote inscribed above the entrance, _Abandon all hope, ye who enter here._ They say that no one who’s boarded her has ever disembarked, apart from General Hayes, General Gomez, and General Reed, that is.

The elusive, ubiquitous, omniscient, ephemeral _they_ say a lot of things about the _Fortress_ , many of them hard to credit, but most of them just plausible enough to make it hard to call anything an outright lie. For all any of us know, a miraculous alloy impervious to weapons fire may exist, but I know for a fact the _Fortress_ is not constructed of it. Even before the damage she sustained in the explosion, she’s put in for repairs twice at my previous posts. True, she is the largest ship in the fleet, but anyone with a decent understanding of Newtonian mechanics and orbital physics should be able to figure out that she should be able to park up anywhere so long as the station in question has enough ballast to counterbalance her mass. That said, some of our smaller stations, the outposts right out on the edge of the Empire that currently serve as little more than buoys or boundary markers, might have to call in other ships to provide that ballast. 

As for her construction crew being killed, I find that hard to believe because I can’t imagine any way they could have covered up the deaths of so many ‘Fleet engineers. Civilians, yeah, I can see them dying by the thousands and nobody being any the wiser, at least nobody who could make a big enough stink about it to get anybody’s attention, but Starfleet engineers are highly trained specialists, even the maintenance engineers who spend most of their time cleaning up after the rest of us. Hell, right out of the academy even I had skills and knowledge beyond those of most civilians, and my class was emergency-deployed halfway through training! 

I wouldn’t be surprised to learn there _is_ something like a dungeon on the _Fortress._ Considering she was the Triad’s flagship, and apart from being cold-blooded, vicious bastards, they were in charge of Imperial security, they probably questioned quite a few people there and most likely needed a higher than average agony booth and interrogation suite to personnel ratio. But if nobody who boards her ever leaves, just how did that little detail about the quote slip out? The truth is, while the _Fortress_ has been docked here, her personnel have visited the station freely, just like the crew of any other ship in the Fleet; and if they were a bit more standoffish than the other crews who visit the station, I’m sure it’s down to the exclusivity of their post. Only the very best of the best were selected to work under the Triad.

Still, it must be said, I have never met _anyone_ or anyone who _knows_ anyone, who has ever claimed that they _used_ to be stationed on the _Fortress_ or that they helped to build her. The former I put down to her crew being an elite group of officers already at the pinnacles of their careers. To transfer anywhere else would be a step down. The crew of the _Fortress_ either retire from their posts or die serving the Empire in battle, they aren’t sucked into some mysterious hellmouth never to escape. The latter I suspect has more to do with the people who worked on her being smart enough to know that they shouldn’t just go about blabbing about having worked on a top-secret project. If they’re captured by enemies of the state, they’ll be tortured for what they know. If they’re captured by Imperial security, they’re tortured to find out _how much_ of what they know they were foolish enough to blab about. Either way, after they’ve told their captors everything they have to say, they’ll be killed in the end.

Rostov is thoughtful for a moment. "Being closest to Sickbay, the _Fortress_ took one hell of a physical jolt in the explosion, Chief, and the accompanying electrical surge made a jigsaw puzzle of her computer core. I can't vouch for her navigation or her warp drive controls, and even if I could, I'd still have to question her structural integrity."

"Well, we’ve got a few things we need to check on the core before we even try switchin’ her on,” says the commodore, looking hard at Rostov. “I’ll go over that nearer the time. Meanwhile, you've got six days to figure it out an' execute it, Michael. An' don't tell me it's impossible. If you can't do the imposs…"“

"…impossible, you're not a real engineer," finish several of the others around the table, in chorus.

Looking chagrined, the commodore mutters, "Use that one a bit much, do I?"

"Only lately, Chief," Virts assures him.

"Which is understandable, given the circumstances," Fincke adds in the commodore's defense.

"I suppose I could forget about the computer for now," Rostov finally muses. "We can work on that wherever she’s sitting. If I focus on reinforcing the ship, we can use a couple tugs from the salvage bay to tow her to wherever we want her."

"You'll still need sensors around the dockin' hatch," the commodore points out, "unless you plan to just crash her into my station an' hope we get an airtight lock."

Everyone is quiet for a moment. A ship's sensors are hardwired into its computer system. If the computer system doesn't work…

To my surprise, I have something useful to contribute.

"Y-y-you could cannibalize the guidance sensors from a few of her torpedoes," I suggest hesitantly. Right until this very moment, I had expected to just keep my mouth shut and learn things throughout the meeting. "They're designed to be easily re-keyed to any navigational computer, so you can run them through one of the tugs, or one of the other ships docked here or even the station's orbital maintenance system – though the OMS might not allow you the precision you need to dock a ship," I realize as I'm speaking. "Just mount them around _Fortress's_ docking hatch, key them to whatever nav system you want, and away you go."

The commodore looks at me and then Rostov, and raises a brow. Rostov shrugs. "It's a good idea. I can't say I would have thought of it, but it'll be a whole lot easier than fixing _Fortress's_ navigation in the next six days and _lot_ less scary than trusting it as it is."

"Well, then, it looks like you have a plan, Mikey. That's good thinkin', Rich. I expect you to help him out with that."

"Aye, sir!" I try not to beam too obviously with pride. Every once in a while, something happens that makes me feel like I really do belong here on Jupiter Station, and every time, it makes me want to grin like a freaking idiot.

Next the commodore turns back to Virts. "Terry, I need your people to come up with some signage, some kind of 'pardon our dust but we're remodelin'' sort of thing directin' people through the airlock to the Livin’ston. I don't want visitors to the station goin' without medical attention because they're havin' trouble findin' our temporary Sickbay."

"Aye, Chief," Virts acknowledges. "We'll get it ready now and put it up as soon as the _Livingston_ docks."

"Perfect, an' Eloise, can you sort of pave the way for this by seein' to it that Jeremy's comin' back an' the _Livin’ston_ dockin' feature prominently in the daily bulletin every day until he's open for business?"

"Absolutely, sir."

"Perfect, an' I suppose it ought to go in that little 'Welcome to Jupiter Station' video we play in the different reception areas around the station, too." The commodore gets a nod from Eloise as he speaks. "Now, the next thing I want to talk about..." He pauses awkwardly, scratches his ear, and says, "Well, actually I wanna go back to the very _first_ thing I was _gonna_ talk about, since I haven't actually told you everything I meant to say when I first brought the subject up."

Eloise's cursor on the screen behind him dutifully returns to the top.

"I know you've all been hearin' a lot of rumors the past few weeks, an' I've been given permission to officially confirm or deny them now," he continues. "The Imperial Palace will be issuin' a press release later today, so y'all are _not_ to share what I tell you here."

Everyone around the table perks up at this, nodding eagerly for news. All most of us know for sure is that something went BOOM and some people we were used to seeing around in the mess hall and at movie nights aren't here anymore. People have been saying some seriously crazy shit ever since the explosion, and if there's anyone who would be in a position to know what was really going on, it would be the commodore.

"As I'm sure you all know, Generals Hayes an' Gomez were aboard the station when the accident happened. They _were_ in Sickbay, along with Doctor Phlox and nearly all of his team when it blew. The three of them an' over thirty other people involved in the project, an' most of the medical personnel assigned to the non-secure, public access part of the Sickbay, perished in the explosion."

There are sharp intakes of breath all around the table, and Fincke looks particularly upset. I remember the last time I saw him at movie night, he was with a young lieutenant wearing medical insignia. I feel bad for him, but I can't remember the girl's name, and I don't know him well enough to invite him for a beer or something. Then I see him exchange a look with Virts, and I know he'll have a friend to lean on.

"Mike, Anna, an' Rich, Liz Cutler is safe. I know y'all are friendly with her, an' knew she was assigned to the secure medical lab. I'm sorry I couldn't say anything before now, but her work was – an' still is – classified. In fact, it was her work that coincidentally required her to be transferred off the station for a while right after the Sickbay blew."

"Will she be back, Commodore?" Doctor Lucas asks from the screen.

The commodore grins at him. "Far as I know, yes, she will," he replies. "When she hears you're returnin' to be our CMO, I'm sure she'll be champin' at the bit to get home to us, Jeremy."

"Any chance you can nudge the process along?" the Doctor asks plaintively. "I can't think of a better candidate than Liz for a head nurse. It would be much easier to start with her in place than to slip her in over the rest of the medical staff."

"I hate to disappoint you, Jeremy, but I don't have that much sway over the Empire's secret projects," the commodore replies regretfully. "Their staffin' needs are often very specific, an' if Liz has the particular skills they require, they can’t just call in a substitute because she's wanted here. 

"As for the 'medical staff' we have here now, basically there aren't any. Everybody but Liz an' a couple of crewmen who were off duty at the time died in the blast." Tucker’s voice is sober; it’s obvious he feels the loss. "Right now our 'medical crew’ consists of two twenty-year old recruits with introductory field medic trainin', so you can pretty much have your pick of the _Livin'ston_ 's crew for your staff."

"If I may, Commodore?" Burnell quietly interjects and when he gets a nod, continues. "The structure and nature of the MACOs is very much based on the traditions of the old pre-Imperial United States Marine Corps. As such, all MACOs, regardless of rank or duty assignment, are trained as expeditionary forces, which requires us all to have at least a Level II first aid certification. At least three of my people and I have Level III certifications, and two others are fully-fledged paramedics. Until Doctor Lucas and the _Livingston_ arrive, we can be at your disposal any time security circumstances allow. To ensure that we're not left shorthanded during that time, if you can persuade the commanders of the various ships docked here to lend us one or two of their MACOs per shift, I can set up a first-aid station right in my command centre and they can serve as the orderlies or take over security duties if the paramedics are needed for their advanced training. I'm sorry I didn't think of it sooner, sir, but I didn't realize our situation was quite so dire."

"No apology needed, Austin," the commodore assures him. "I didn't know it myself until this mornin'. We _both_ dropped the ball on that one, but we picked it back up in time. I'm gonna let you pick the people who come on the station to work under you. Chances are you'll already know one or two of them an' have an opinion on whether you want them workin' here or not." 

Looking to Eloise, he says, "Soon as we're done here, please draft an order requestin' all ship commanders to submit a roster of their MACOs to Austin. Explain why, an' include a notice that if they don't participate, they will not be permitted to dock with the station or transport any personnel over until our situation improves. Send it right to my PADD for authorization, an' then include it in the hailin' packet the comm. officer sends out to every ship seekin' permission to dock."

Eloise nods, and the commodore turns back to the screen at the foot of the table.

"Now you know the situation, Jeremy. If you want Liz for head nurse, just advise your staff that the position is reserved."

The doctor makes some thoughtful noises, but doesn't exactly agree. I can understand why. Not that the staff of the _Livingston_ will necessarily have any choice in whether they get assigned to the station or go out on another ship, but nobody wants to come into an assignment knowing they're short-staffed and yet having the boss hold a plum position open for one of his lackeys until they're ready to come to work. Knowing Liz and the admiration she held for Doctor Lucas the few times she mentioned him, I doubt it will really be like that, but the people on the _Livingston_ don't know that. Doctor Lucas may well have to fill the head nurse position in order to keep his staff satisfied.

"As for the rest of you, I'm sorry," the commodore says with compassion, "but if you or any of your people are missin' someone from the medical facility, they're gone."

Looking somberly at Fincke, he says, "Morris, if you need anything…"

"I'd like to get a call out to her folks if I could," he says, taking the commodore at his word.

The commodore looks to Eloise who looks sympathetically to Fincke and says, "As soon as the official notice hits the air, I'll advise the comm. station to put you through whenever you're ready."

Fincke nods his thanks, and Tucker continues. I notice this personal favor does not appear in the meeting minutes.

"A full list of the dead will be published later today," the commodore tells us. "Be there for your people, be there for each other. If you think someone around you needs a little extra support, give the name to Eloise."

"We have a few people on the station with... qualifications in grief counseling," she explains, wrestling a bit with the word ‘qualifications’, probably because it looks the same in French though it’s pronounced much differently, but she gets it close enough that context makes it clear. "I'll help set them up with somebody, if they're interested."

"Have you any plans for a memorial service, sir?" Virts asks.

"I haven't…"

"If I may, sir?" Eloise interrupts, and when the chief nods, she says, "I've had communications from about a dozen people across the departments volunteering to assist, but given the circumstances, the impact of so many losses all at once, we really need a ranking officer to take charge."

"I'll do it," Virts volunteers immediately.

"I'll help," Major Burnell offers. "Terry and I will be coordinating our schedules a lot anyway for the background checks, so it shouldn't be too difficult for us to organize a time for this."

"Eloise will get you the list of volunteers," the commodore says.

Eloise nods and dutifully notes the plans in the agenda.

"Now, one more thing that most of you may _not_ know, is that General Reed was also present on the station when Sickbay blew up."

Nobody actually interrupts with a gasp or yelp of surprise, but I'm not the only one whose head snaps around at the revelation. It's apparent that even Eloise is surprised by the news, and Major Burnell appears to be dumbfounded. But I've spent enough time with Rostov and Hess to realize they're not the least bit taken aback. It makes me wonder how much they know about the project that destroyed our medical facility.

"Naturally, he was also deeply involved in the project," the commodore continues, ignoring our reactions. "But he was elsewhere at the time of the explosion. He is safe, but is quite understandably observin' a period of mournin' for the colleagues he worked with so closely for so long. I’m sure we’ll be hearin' from him again real soon.

“ _I’m sure none of you needs tellin’,_ ” he adds, with a hard look around, “that his survival is a stroke of luck in a lot of ways. I’m not sayin’ he’s likely to win any popularity contests, but he's exactly the man we need headin' up the military under the circumstances. He has the power an’ the authority to keep the situation in the Empire a hell of a lot more stable than it would have been otherwise. Right now, we do not need an’ cannot afford a power struggle. So let’s just be thankful he _did_ survive, otherwise we’d be lookin’ at some serious shit breakin’ out.”

‘A period of mourning’? I catch the look Rostov and Hess exchange, and I am sure they're as dubious as I am, probably more so. I was pretty low on the food chain back on _Enterprise,_ and I kept my head down and concentrated on my work, so the big fish hardly noticed me unless I screwed up. Even back then, Hess and Rostov were the commodore's right and left hands, so they certainly received more scrutiny than a young, poorly trained ensign. Reed probably forgot I was alive after my initial security interview, but I've never forgotten my meeting with him. It was like sitting in a room with a mad dog in the first stages of infection when you can't even be sure the animal is sick. He was the consummate professional, sitting at his desk across from me, but everything he said and did was just a _little bit off_ , a little _too_ controlled, almost as if he could smell my fear and was schooling himself not to attack.

I could tell by watching my crewmates that I wasn't the only one who had that impression of him. Being short of stature and slight of build, he should not have cut an imposing figure on _Enterprise_ , but even Captain Forrest kept him at a distance just beyond arm's length. In the corridors, only Captain Forrest and Commander Archer did not stand aside to let him pass. Even the commodore, then a commander and technically outranking then-Major Reed, would step out of his way, though he did at least hold his ground until the major came to a complete stop before allowing him to continue.

If anything, the general is gathering his resources now, trying to figure out how he'll command and deploy the MACOs and maintain power with the other two gone. But it wouldn't be very politic of the commodore to say _that,_ would it? The commodore is one of the most honest men I have ever met, honest to a fault, some would say, but certainly not honest to the point of stupidity.

So we all accept that the general is 'in mourning', and move on.

Eloise gives the commodore a puzzled look.

"Sir…?" she begins.

He smirks at her like a kid who has finally managed to get something over on his mother.

"He's one of the most powerful people in the Empire, Eloise. He comes an' goes as he pleases, an' he was workin' on a Top Secret project," he says. "There are any number of people an' objects that come an' go on this station every day without you knowin' about it. Hell, some of 'em without _me_ knowin', though after this incident, I'm tryin' to put a stop to _that_ shit.

"Anyway, I wouldn't be tellin' y'all about Liz an' about General Reed an' the list of casualties now, except the Empress agrees with me that havin' the truth out there to stop rumors an' wild speculation is necessary for the security of the Empire, especially in General Reed's case. Austin, do you have any insight on this situation for us?"

Burnell is clearly wrong-footed by the question. He even stammers a little when he answers.

"I…erm…I have to admit, I am a little surprised that I wasn't notified the general was on the station," he says. "As you know, he…" It's strange how he pauses then, and as he squirms like someone with a rash on his ass, I wonder if he somehow knows about the commodore's history with the general going all the way back to _Enterprise._ "…he personally appointed me to my post here."

"An' we're mighty pleased to have you, Austin," the chief grins reassuringly, letting him know there are no hard feelings. "But the general’s presence here was on a strictly need-to-know basis, and for whatever reason, you weren’t included on that particular list.

“But from a security perspective, for the safety of the station, can you maybe prepare a short briefin' for us on what to look out for if Reed stays incommunicado for a while?"

"Certainly, I can do so, sir," Burnell agrees, "but what makes you suspect that he will, as you say, 'stay incommunicado'?"

"I've known Reed for a lot of years," the commodore explains. "When we served together on the _Enterprise_ he didn't like many people an' he didn't trust _any_ of them _._ I can't imagine that losin' the only two people he might _ever_ have trusted in his adult life wouldn't knock him for a loop. If he goes into a downward spiral because of this loss, I'm concerned the MACOs, in the absence of a strong leader, won't sit idly by an' just wait for whatever happens next."

I see heads all around the table nod. It's amazing how one small point of shared experience – in this case the loss of a trusted confidant – can humanize even a monster like Reed.

I've only been here a year. I remember what not having any one I could trust was like. Hell, just a few weeks ago, I remember standing in the mess hall, thinking about sitting at a table that was half consumed by a potted plant because I didn't want to risk the humiliation of asking to join a group that was already seated and being rejected. Then Rostov invited me to join him, Liz, and Anna, and I realized I actually _did_ have friends here. Now, I don't know how I'd cope without the three of them and the commodore. 

So maybe the general _is_ in mourning after all.

"Whatever they want to do to each other out in the field isn't my concern," the commodore continues on about the MACOs. "If I want to be cynical about it, hell, havin' them shoot each other up in a power struggle out there is just job security for the Empire's shipbuilders. Havin' them bring that fight to _us_ , on the other hand, could be catastrophic, not just to the station, but to the whole Empire. I wanna know what we should be watchin' for an' how we can protect ourselves if they decide to make a move _against_ the station or against each other _on_ the station. Can you give me that intel an' maybe get some plans in place so we’re ready if it ever does come to pass?"

"How soon do you want it?" Burnell asks.

"How soon can you get it?"

"Within twenty-four hours? It won't be perfect, but it will be bloody close."

"Twenty-four hours it is, then, bearin' in mind your meetin's with Terry about clearances for his maintenance staff an’ helpin' him organize the memorial an' settin' up a temporary first aid station."

"Not to worry, sir," Burnell says, "I have a number of highly qualified staff to whom I can delegate any number of responsibilities in order to devote my time to those tasks requiring my personal attention."

The agenda on the screen behind the commodore is extending to two pages as Eloise fills it with notes, and I am learning some of the secrets behind Jupiter Station's outstanding accomplishments. For one thing, meetings are not mere discussions, _decisions_ get made, almost at the speed of thought. For another, Commodore Tucker has a senior staff who are willing to the point of being eager to step up and take charge of things that need to be done. Never in any of my previous postings have I ever seen any group of people so willing to volunteer.

Of course, anywhere else in the Empire, if you volunteer and find yourself in over your head, you're left to struggle and possibly fail, for which you are subsequently punished. Here, if you volunteer and get in trouble, you ask for help and get it. If you still fail, your supervisor sits down with you and helps you figure out what went wrong and how to improve your performance in the future. The secret, I realize, is all in how the commodore and his staff deal with failure. Here on Jupiter Station, failure is treated as an opportunity to learn, so, while nobody wants to fail, no one is so afraid of it that they are unwilling to even try a difficult thing.

"Now, last thing about the explosion, before I forget, an' because I've already meant to mention it an' it slipped my mind twice in this meetin'."

The good humor has completely left his face now. He sits forward, scowling, as he continues.

"Austin, Terry, an' I determined that the cause of the explosion was an unauthorized piece of equipment Phlox ordered for his project that was secretly installed in our Sickbay by one of General Gomez's people. It was a medical refrigeration unit that wasn't rated for the pressures at which we run our coolant. The guy they had install it had the skills to do the plumbin' to hook it into our systems, but lacked either the sense to check the specs against our system requirements or, givin' him the benefit of the doubt on that count, maybe the nerve to tell Generals Hayes an' Gomez that the product they'd selected wasn't up to code. There was a coolant leak, a spark, an' boom.

" _That’s_ why every secure project is now required to have its own Maintenance an' Repair specialist who's familiar with the station."

He pauses as if considering his next words and finally blows out a gusty breath. "I've got a lot more I could say about that, but I wouldn't want it on record, an' it would just be my temper talkin' anyway. I don't want to waste anybody's time with it, so, before I get pissed off an' ruin my whole day, I'm changin' the subject.

"Richard!"

"Sir?" Suddenly my heart is in my throat. I really don't want to be the one held responsible for the commodore's mood for the rest of the day; especially when he's already hacked off at a couple of dead brass who outranked him in life, so he wouldn't even have been able to yell at them properly if they hadn't blown themselves and all those other unfortunate people into whatever is smaller than smithereens.

But the commodore is smiling at me, and unlike my first day on the station, he manages to say my full name without making it sound like an insult, so maybe I'll be okay.

"Are you still wonderin' what you're doin' here?"

"I thought you might tell me when the time was right," I say.

"Well, you know we're about to begin buildin' the next new _Defiant_ -class ship in just a couple weeks," he begins, and my heart sinks to my toes. The plan has always been that once the commodore was satisfied I’m adequately qualified, I would build my own ship and leave Jupiter Station as a chief engineer.

"Yes, sir," I reply. "It's been on the board for months." 

Hess has a board outside her office that tracks our progress. It's laid out like a triptych. The left panel is divided into six squares showing the past six months and highlighting our accomplishments. The center panel shows the goals for the month and our percentage of progress toward those goals. We are slacking off a little this month because of the explosion, but we're usually a little ahead of schedule, so it hasn't been a problem yet. The right panel is made of six more squares and shows us what's coming up. Anyone with a minute to spare can scroll back almost a decade on the left panel and see how things have changed on the station. We've gotten better, more efficient; we've accomplished more and had more to celebrate. On the right, you can see the changing shape of the future, if you know what you're looking at, in the types and numbers of ships we are building and refitting. 

If you’re a Human I suppose it’s kind of reassuring. I’m not sure any non-Human would find it all that pleasant viewing.

"An' you know, it's a long-standin' tradition that the engineer in charge of buildin' a ship has the option of requestin' a post as her Chief, an' that the request is always honored, don't you?"

"Yes, sir." 

A year ago, that sounded like a good idea to me, but now, I don't want to leave. For the first time since I enlisted, I’ve found friends, but even apart from that, the opportunities I've had here to learn from the best and network with my colleagues will be difficult if not impossible to come by on an active ship out in the field. I don't know if anyone would believe me because it's so unusual in the Fleet, but I'm _happy_ here.

"Well, Anna says you're ready," he tells me, and after a beat, he amends, "Actually, I didn't need her to tell me. I'd been thinkin' the same thing; she just brought it up first."

"Really?" I don't want to leave, but I can't help smiling. I could never have guessed how _good_ it feels to know that the two people I admire most have that kind of confidence in me.

"Yep," he says. "An' I know it's a long-held ambition of yours to be Chief Engineer on your own ship."

"Yes, sir, it has been," I agree, because really, it always has been the ultimate plan to get me qualified as quickly as possible and get me the hell out of here and out of the commodore's hair. I just wasn't ready for it to happen so soon.

"But now, we have our Sickbay to rebuild," he continues, and I feel a small tendril of hope stir in my heart. "An' there's a lot of repairs needed in the surroundin' decks, too. The Sickbay on this station services the needs of almost six thousand people, as compared to the crews of four hundred on the _Defiant_ -class ships. That's a year's work right there for a full team of engineers that I don't have to spare."

"I see." Now I _am_ confused. Never in a million years would I have expected the commodore to keep me around any longer than absolutely necessary, but it sounds like that's what he is preparing to do.

"Besides destroyin' our Sickbay," he goes on, enumerating the challenges Jupiter station is facing, "this accident has brought other issues to light, an' I don't have enough experienced personnel to deal with them all."

"Really, sir?" I'm feeling excited, and a bit confused, but he'd probably give me hell for just volunteering for something without knowing what he'll be expecting me to do, so I have to wait for him to tell me.

"Well, for one thing, we have an agin' fleet," he says. "I've run the numbers, an' even puttin' two battleships a year into service, which is pretty near our maximum capacity for new construction, it'll be more than a decade before we've replaced the whole fleet."

"Yes, sir, I'm aware of that," and when his brows shoot up in surprise, I explain, "Anna's taught me a lot about long-term project management."

He looks pleased by the revelation and nods in satisfaction.

"So, last time I was on Earth, the Empress an' I sat down with the Minister of Imperial Security an' the Minister of Labor an' Industry." 

It was a surprise to us all when he decided to deliver the preliminary reports on the disaster in person. If nothing else, it was an impressive display of courage. Without a warm body in hand for the Empress to execute as punishment for the damage to her station, there was always a chance that she would elect to use his. A collective sigh of relief practically echoed around the station when the Imperial shuttle assigned to return him had completed its docking procedures in the shuttle bay and the commodore stepped out whole and unharmed. Until today, he has said nothing about that trip other than that it was good to feel the sun on his skin again.

"When I explained that we can refit two of the NX-class ships with more effective hull plating, higher-yield weapons, an' faster warp cores in the same time it takes to build _one_ Defiant-class ship, they were all over that idea like white on rice."

"Uhh…" I glance up at the agenda behind him and see that Eloise has typed out that they were _very enthusiastic._ The commodore's colorful idioms are usually charming and often amusing, but sometimes, they’re more difficult to understand than Eloise’s occasionally mangled English. "Yes, sir."

"But they _still_ want us buildin' two new ships a year, too," he grumbles. "Now, I have the _room_ to do both the refits an' the new construction, but I'm gonna need a whole 'nother staff for the refits."

"I can see where that would be a problem." I'm not bouncing in my chair, not yet anyway, but it's taking an effort not to show my excitement.

"Also, this station is goin' on twenty years old. It's past due for a complete overhaul, an' since it took the better part of a decade to build it, I can easily imagine the renovations takin' at least half that time."

"I hadn't realized that." If this were a movie, I'd be calling for him to cut to the chase already. All I want is for him to ask me to _do_ something so I can say _yes_!

"An' finally it's unlikely but possible that we might need an additional supervisor to manage the Maintenance an' Repair staff assigned to the classified projects," he says. "In the past, they've done so much of their own work on the downlow that nobody really knows how many man-hours will be required to keep them adequately staffed.

"So, in the interest of full disclosure, I have to confess that I debated a moment about whether I wanted to tell you you're ready to build your own ship."

"Really, sir?"

"Yeah, but I know that's unfair to you," he says, with the embarrassed body language of an errant child caught in the act of some mischief. "Still, I'm hopin' I can talk you into deferrin' your plans for a little while longer, maybe twelve to eighteen months? So you can install our new Sickbay for us."

"Yes, sir," I tell him, but apparently I'm not firm enough, because he keeps talking. 

"Once the job is done, you could go to work on the very next starship we build, an' a year an' a half, maybe two years from now, you'd be chief engineer of your own ship, with all that command experience under your belt. It's not a bad tradeoff."

Honestly, part of me wants to string him along to see how he tries to sell me on the job. The commodore is a very charismatic leader, and much of that charisma comes from his honest enthusiasm for the work we do. I have no doubt, if I were to make him 'convince' me to agree to install the new sickbay, that he would have me thinking it is one of the most important and patriotic things I will ever do and that it will be a highlight of my career, decades from now, when I am retired from the service (if retirement is still allowed by then) and telling tall tales to my grandchildren and the other old engineers in a nursing home somewhere on Earth.

But it's not really fair to make him jump through hoops like that.

" _Yes_ , sir," I say again, more firmly.

"Of course, no one will blame you if you decide you want to go ahead an' build yourself a ship," he continues. “Or you could take on the first of the refits. The plan is to reassign their crews while the work is bein’ done, an’ I could pull some strings to get you the Chief Engineer’s job when they recommission her an’ have you out of here in half the time.”

Now, I'm starting to wonder if he's messing with me, and a little flare of panic makes me worry that he might be trying to talk me _out_ of it.

" _No_ , sir! When I said, 'Yes, sir,' I meant I'd take the job," I tell him. "Rebuilding Sickbay, I mean. I'd like to stay here a little longer, learn a little more, maybe make a few more friends."

I can tell by his expression that he's surprised and pleased by my response.

"Oh, well, then!" He raises his coffee mug. "Welcome aboard, Commander Kelby."

The others raise their drinks as well and echo his sentiments. I join in the impromptu toast and thank them all for their well-wishes and support. I'll wait until I can speak to the commodore in private to ask him what happens if, a year or eighteen months from now, after I finish the Sickbay, I'm still not ready to leave.

The meeting ends with the commodore listing off about fifteen things I need to do. Then he tells me I don't need to worry about taking notes because Eloise will send me a memo. At least I take care of a couple of items on it before we all leave the conference room. First, I schedule a teleconference with Doctor Lucas for tomorrow morning. I imagine working closely with him on the design of the new Sickbay, and I want to get to know him now so we can get busy as soon as he arrives. Then I arrange meetings with Fincke, Virts, Hess, and Rostov for tomorrow. 

Fincke and I need to talk about how long clean-up will take and whether I can start work in one area of the damaged section while his people finish cleaning another area. Virts and I will have to divide the repair work on the damaged sections that surround Sickbay. Anything that Sickbay taps directly into should fall to my team, so we'll have to look at some blueprints and determine what's what. I'll need Hess's help with scheduling. The commodore has told me my team will have a disproportionate number of new engineers. Not only will their inexperience slow us down, but I can also expect a higher rate of attrition as some of them discover that life on a space station is not for them and they would prefer the adventure of a shipboard posting or the excitement of R&D work. Rostov and I will have to talk about what salvaged parts I will be able to use. I would hope a brand-new Sickbay would have top-of-the-line medical equipment, but floors and walls are just floors and walls. They haven't changed much since man moved out of the caves and started building his own shelters. A station housing six thousand people shouldn't be without medical facilities for long, and using salvaged structural components will be a hell of a lot faster than manufacturing them.

I've been busily tapping away at my PADD for a couple minutes when I realize Rostov is still here, standing by the coffee urn.

"Something I can do for you, Mike?" I ask him with a quick glance in his direction.

He takes that as an invitation and sits down at the end of the table to my left, where Doctor Lucas's monitor had been during the meeting.

He hesitates briefly, licks his lips, and replies bluntly, "I need a favor, Rich."

I wait a beat. I'm pretty sure I already know what he's going to ask, but one thing you learn pretty quickly in the Imperial Fleet is that you don't agree to anything until you know the details. While I trust Rostov not to ask me to do anything illegal or excessively immoral, whatever he's asking could be embarrassing, annoying, ridiculously time consuming, or, with his reputation for practical jokes, potentially humiliating.

When he doesn't speak, I have to. "I'm not gonna give you an answer one way or another until you tell me what it is you want."

"Put Julie Massaro on your team," he says. "Make her your second in command."

"Just over an hour ago, you told the commodore there was no need to transfer her," I remind him. I really don't mind that he and the commodore used me as their witness. Not that there would ever be a need, but if asked, I could truthfully testify to what was said in front of me without getting anyone in trouble. But to have the situation change so quickly after their little performance could raise some red flags.

"And there wasn't a _need_ , specifically," he hedges. 

I guess he can tell from my skeptical look that I require more explanation. 

"Julie and I have _talked_ about where we are going." He glances at me. "That's all we have done. Is _talk_ ," he emphasizes. "And the department heads have known since before the explosion that there would be new opportunities opening up on the station. So we agreed to wait and see whether that would give her a way to make a move without displacing somebody who's already comfortable in their position. If you make her your XO, it's a lateral transfer to an open position. It's neither a promotion nor a demotion for her, nobody gets their nose out of joint over being bumped out of their job or overlooked for a promotion to make room for her, and you get a highly qualified officer for your right-hand-man…er, woman."

And though he doesn't say it, Mike gets his itch scratched. 

I consider his suggestion for all of about ten seconds. I'm not rejecting it out of hand, but I know something Rostov doesn't.

"Mike, I can promise you this," I tell him. "If Julie is interested in a place on my team, all she has to do is interview, and I can guarantee I'll have a spot for her, but there's no way I'm promising her second-in-command right now."

"Well, why not?"

I'm so surprised by the question I laugh in his face.

"Good God, Mike! I've had the job less than half an hour!" I point out. "For me to make the boss's best friend's girlfriend my second-in-command without even interviewing anybody is definitely gonna tell some people that the fix is in. And they won't just resent Julie for getting special treatment, they'll look at me as somebody's puppet lacking the authority and confidence to make my own staffing decisions."

"It's not that big of a deal, Rich," he tries placating me.

Now that pisses me off. "Are you really that naïve, or are you just playing dumb?"

He's getting irritated, too. "I don't know. Why don't you tell me what you're getting at and we'll find out!"

I sigh. Of course his confusion is genuine. Being Commodore Tucker's best friend, he would never have had the kind of experiences that make me nervous about showing favoritism.

"Look, I know this may be hard for you to believe, but even here on Jupiter Station, when people think they're being screwed out of or overlooked for an important opportunity, they can be bitchy and mean."

"What are you talking about?" 

He sounds suspicious of me now. He doesn't want to believe that we're not all one big, happy family every minute of every day. He must _really_ be in love to have shut his brain down so completely. 

"I know you and Anna were under orders to be nice to me, Mike," I tell him. "But nobody else was. When people saw me, this nobody from the ass end of nowhere, brought in for special attention from Commodore Tucker, they resented it. They resented _me._ From short-sheeting my bed to stealing my tools to cutting off the hot water in my quarters, I dealt with a lot of shit my first six months here. And I'll tell you something else: for dirty tricks and mean practical jokes, there's nobody better equipped than a station full of engineers."

"Give me names," he demands, "I'll deal with them."

"Forget about that, Mike." I wave the offer away. "It's all water under the bridge now. The people who resented me have either been convinced that I belong here or have discovered they are in such a small minority that complaining only causes themselves more problems. I've proven myself now, and frankly, looking back, that's how I'd have preferred to handle it, even knowing I could have complained to someone and had them disciplined. I'm proud of myself for how I dealt with it on my own, and I'm not going to let you take that from me by punishing them after the fact.

"I only told you about it because I know you don't want that for Julie. I'll tell you again, I like Julie and I think we'd work well together. There's definitely a place for her on my team, if she wants it; but I'm not naming her second-in-command until I've had a chance to consider other possible candidates. That's the best I can offer you. Talk it over with Julie and she can take it or leave it."

His belligerent look bleeds away and he becomes thoughtful. "People really harassed you?"

I shake my head.

"Oh, that wasn't the half of it. At one point, I was washing my uniform in the shower every night because nothing was coming back from the station's laundry, and I only had one uniform left."

"You never said anything," he says, and the respect I see in his eyes almost makes all the crap I put up with worth it.

"In my experience, complaining about being bullied only pisses the bullies off," I respond. "Your only hope is to either fight back or win them over."

"Since you never ended up in the brig for brawling, I guess I know which you did," he says, getting up to leave. "I'll talk to Julie."

I nod as he ambles out. "You do that."

He pauses in the doorway and turns to look at me. "Thanks, Rich."

* * *

**Chapter Eighteen**

**Dilemma**

_Major Austin Burnell_

I have the feeling the next several weeks, possibly months, are going to be a bit awkward for me. With Alpha and General Gomez gone, it falls to General Reed alone to maintain order within the MACOs, and while my loyalty to the man is absolute – as long as he can hold onto the reins of power – I'm not sure the same can be said for all the MACOs, let alone the ship's captains and the Fleet admiralty who command them. Certainly there is one subset within our number, an elite caste, if you will, dubbed The Dispossessed by General Reed, who will not waver so long as he is fit, but we don't all know each other. There are clues and codes we can use, behavioural cues, really, that help us deduce who might be one of us, but they're much subtler than a secret handshake, and there is no single shibboleth that can be used to identify us all.

Once the _Livingston_ gets here and we no longer need to use the MACOs from the ships docked around the station, things will be easier as I won’t have to worry about co-opting personnel from another of the Dispossessed to man our makeshift first aid station. Still, the possibility of action _on_ Jupiter Station or _against_ us, should some ambitious soul decide to jump into the breach and reach for power, could mean conflicting loyalties for me. 

The general has declared that Pack must not fight Pack, unless the challenger is seeking to assume the duties and the power of the challenged. He has also declared that any challenge for power _must_ end in the death of one combatant. These rules are meant to keep us in check and keep us in power at the top of the MACO ranks, for many of us are highly competitive by nature and programmed by our elite training to be obedient to our betters so long as they _are_ better; and we are absolutely vicious in bringing them down when they falter. They ensure that the fittest among us stay in power and that the lesser members of the Dispossessed remain loyal and obedient to their alphas.

Like the general, these two simple rules are elegant, brutal, and brilliant.

There are four ships currently docked at the station. When the _Livingston_ arrives, there will be five. I know for sure that Major Jignesh Vaja, the head of security on the _Harbinger_ , is a member of the Dispossessed. I invite him onto the station for drinks and we are able to speak frankly about what we each expect from the other. 

Immediately upon entering my quarters, he exposes his neck to me. I step close and accept his submission, then lightly lick the skin of his temple to reassure him that, more than just an exchange of information between a superior officer and a subordinate, this is a meeting of old friends. I don't just wish to use him, I am seeking his help and support.

Settling down opposite me in the chair set ready for him, Jignesh assures me that his captain is not likely to make any move for power. She is young for a person in her position, but experienced enough to know that she doesn't yet have enough experience or power to advance beyond her current position. In the unlikely event that a shift in the wind gives her the idea that she can raise a successful challenge to her superiors, he has given me his word that, so long as General Reed is fit to command, he will not obey any illegal order from his captain to move against this station or any other ship in the fleet. Moreover, he promises me he will obligate her to fulfil her duty to defend this station against attack if such a thing should happen while the _Harbinger_ is anywhere in the vicinity.

Frankly, I would expect no less of him or any other MACO. These promises he makes are simply his duty to the Empire. I let him know that I appreciate the reassurance, but I am careful to make it clear that I am unimpressed.

He next offers me the names and assignments of other Pack members who are known to him. I tell him I can’t respond in kind, but he recognizes that a man in my position has far greater need for such information than a mere security chief on one of the many battleships in the Imperial Fleet. We negotiate an agreement whereby in exchange for the names I will reserve a place for him on my staff if ever he needs to leave a post quickly, essentially making Jupiter Station his bolthole in case of emergency. 

His information is useful; only two of the five names he offers up were known to me. He can’t tell me whether any of the MACOs aboard the other ships docked with the station are Pack, but he’s agreed to help me with my inquiries in exchange for a letter in his file extolling his virtues when the task is completed to my satisfaction. His help will prove invaluable, provided the results are reliable (and it goes without saying that he will depart this life at the peak of his career if they are not – I would rather he fail in his mission than provide faulty intel, and he knows it), but it will take him time to suss them out.

Time, I fear, is the one thing I don’t have in abundance, but wait I must, and wait I shall, for I can't simply invite the Chiefs of Security of four starships over to Jupiter Station for a dinner party and ask them if they were raised by wolves. In the meantime, I have duties on the station to attend to.

I have already completed my clearance interview with Commander Virts, and since he had to pass a deep background check within the past two years just to get access to some parts of the station that fall under his regular job responsibilities, I sent Commodore Tucker a memo indicating he is now cleared on my authority to attend to maintenance and repair emergencies on any project on the station (I left it to Terry and the commodore to determine exactly what constitutes an emergency). My interviews with Terry's team will begin tomorrow afternoon, and the schedule has already been communicated to Eloise for her to disseminate to the affected personnel. Before we parted, Terry suggested a dinner meeting tomorrow with the people who volunteered to help with the memorial service. He agreed to talk to Chef about preparing some kind of buffet in one of the conference rooms and said he’ll send out a memo with the time and place once it's arranged.

After selecting the security officers from the docked ships to man our first-aid station, I left the remaining arrangements for that to my staff. I wasn't being the least bit facetious when I told the commodore I would be delegating many of my responsibilities. As an expeditionary force, MACOs are well-trained in setting up a duty station. In a ground assault, we are the ones who go into the fray, win the fight, and secure the area ahead of the engineers who build a base for command and the allied services to populate. Setting up a small infirmary is child's play. My staff have it organized, stocked and staffed in less than three hours.

This leaves me with just one task left to finish.

It would seem a simple thing for a man of my experience to come up with a plan to defend the station and suppress any conflict within it should the MACOs or anyone else decide to make a grab for power against us or in our close proximity, and on the surface, I suppose it is. There are certain general orders and standing laws in place that strictly define the chain of command from the Empress herself right down to the rawest recruit just entering training, and any action to subvert that rigid order is by definition unlawful. As Security Chief, it’s my duty to end any such unlawful acts on the station or in the proximal space that falls under my jurisdiction, including such activities as may be taking place on vessels within that space. So, drawing up a plan to satisfy Commodore Tucker will be simple enough.

 _Pack_ is another matter altogether, though. 

Just days ago, when we had the Triad, we all knew our places. Now, it seems there may be a vacancy at the top. Alpha's downfall by no means guarantees Reed's succession. There may be one or two of our more ambitious members who could seek to leapfrog over the rest of us into the top spot if the general spends too much time in 'mourning'. Before being posted to Jupiter Station, I might have been one of those hard chargers calculating my chances of usurping the place at the Empress's right hand (or even the throne itself) in this time of upheaval, but I've been around enough to know that at present I have sufficient power here to keep myself and my chosen ones quite comfortably happy without having to guard against the constant threat of a coup by one of my up-and-coming subordinates. 

Not that I'm saying I would _never_ aspire to distant heights or that _none_ of my subordinates would _ever_ seek to topple me and take my place, but I have a sure thing here, and it's a good thing, and as they say, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. For me to make a grab for power from here, circumstances would have to be such that I could attain it simply by reaching out with an open hand and closing my fingers around it, and I have far too little concrete information about General Reed's whereabouts or status to contemplate any such foolishness as challenging him - _yet_. For any of my people to usurp my position, they would either have to kill me outright, which would spark an investigation and only advance my second in command; or they would have to convince the commodore that I and every member above them in my chain of command are unfit or corrupt, an extraordinary feat in any circumstance made all the more difficult by the premium the commodore places on intangibles such as loyalty, truth, and doing the right thing. So, I am as secure here as any person with any amount of power in the Empire could possibly expect to be. 

Most of my Pack mates, however, are not as comfortable as I am, and while there are as many excuses for seeking power as there are people seeking it, the ultimate reason for all is Power itself. And since the general has declared that Pack must not fight Pack except for Power and to the death, my difficulty lies in determining how to subdue any of my Dispossessed brethren who threaten the station _without_ getting into a power struggle with them.

I do manage, easily, to complete a plan for Commodore Tucker within my twenty-four hour deadline, but I’m still struggling with how to handle my fellow Pack mates if they should force a confrontation.

And running deep beneath my thoughts as I complete and direct all of these tasks is the underlying question that I, more than any of the Humans serving under Commodore Tucker, have the right to ask.

I, exactly like General Reed, underwent the conditioning that made us Pack. So I know far better than any of them that Pack members no longer have the capacity to ‘grieve’ in the way Humans do.

Alpha, without a doubt, was Pack. If General Gomez wasn’t one by conditioning, she was one by association. The loss of both of them at once may have been stunning, but to a Pack leader sharing power with them, it can have offered one thing _– total_ _power._

The disruption may have been catastrophic. It will mean a vast amount of reorganisation and redirection. But the reward will be the sole possession of the apex. It’s nothing to be ashamed of; it’s as natural and inevitable to us as breathing.

So why, with the ultimate aim of any Pack member in his grasp, is General Reed ‘in mourning’? 

* * *

**Chapter Nineteen**

**Co-Conspirators**

_Commodore Charles Tucker III_

Officially, my day is done, and while I never have a short one and wouldn't know what to do with myself if I did, today has been longer than most. In addition to the usual station business, I have managed to see to half a dozen other things that all came out of the Morning Meeting. Before lunch, Eloise, bless her heart, had already finagled my schedule to squeeze in visits to the paint shop where I approved the signs Terry Virts' team put together for directing people to the _Livingston_ once it docks. The maintenance and repair team has been working on color palettes for different areas of the station for a few years now, working the changes in gradually in the natural course of their duties – soothing blues and greens for the residential decks and guest quarters, energetic reds, yellows, and oranges for the recreational sections, industrial greys for the workshops and the construction and salvage bays, restful earth tones for operations and administrative offices, and sleek black and white with pastel accents for the lobbies around the docking areas. No one has ever claimed responsibility for it, but I let them know I'd noticed the plan by suggesting where I thought some of the different colored signs should go.

Then I was off to the MACOs temporary infirmary, which, if I'm honest, is better equipped, prepared, and organized than the medical facilities on some of the older and smaller ships in the fleet. With a dozen neatly made up cots, fluids hanging from IV poles at the ready and a locked drug cabinet stocked with essentials commandeered from the several ships already docked at the station - 'No more than they can spare, sir, and they'll be re-supplied in two days, as soon as the next shipment arrives from Earth,' Lieutenant Janis Crawley, Burnell's SiC, informed me - it didn't take much imagination to see them springing into action like a trained ER staff in the event of a serious accident, and I made a point of saying so while they were all are around to hear it. When I realized they'd sacrificed their training bay for the project, I told Janis she should find another space and communicate it to Eloise for my approval, and they'd have it.

"Already found it, sir," she said crisply, and handed me a PADD. It was a storage bay that's in use, but her plans included new homes for the parts, equipment, and supplies she'd have to move. 

As I approved the proposal with my thumbprint and signature and forwarded it to Eloise for dissemination to the appropriate parties, I grinned. "With that kind of efficiency, Lieutenant, I might just recruit you into the Corps of Engineers."

"Much of what we do _is_ engineering, sir," she told me. "Social engineering. It's a lot easier to convince people they want to behave themselves than it is to stop them when they get up to no good."

I considered her words a moment and nodded. "Can't argue with that," I told her. "Falls right in line with my philosophy: Set your people up to succeed, an' they usually will." 

"Yes, sir." 

She saluted briskly as I took my leave, and before the door could close behind me I could hear her already giving orders to relocate the stuff from the storage bay in preparation for installing their training equipment.

As the day wore on, I approved Burnell's interview schedule, Kelby and Rostov's final plan for moving the _Fortress_ , and new shift schedules for the departments authorized for overtime. Then, right at the end of the day, Eloise somehow found an hour for me to sit down with Kelby, which, I'm pleased to realize, wasn't really necessary. Rich has learned his job, and learned it well. He might not be in the same league as Hess and Rostov, but he's more than capable of doing anything that might be required of him while constructing the new Sick Bay. He doesn't exactly need hand-holding from me, but I could tell that he was anxious for my approval to tell him he was on the right track. The fact is, any suggestions or insights I was able to give him would have come to him naturally as the project progressed. All I did was provide him a little more lead time to figure out how to deal with them.

"I'm proud of you, Rich," I tell him as we wrap up our meeting. "You've got this, son. An' if I haven't said it already, collaboratin' with the person who's gonna use any facility you build will be the best decision you make every time. Jeremy is really gonna appreciate it."

"Thanks, Chief," he says cheerfully. "I'm just trying to do what you taught me."

"Yeah, well, don't give me too much credit," I say, feeling embarrassed in a way because a little more than a year ago, the plan was to bring him in to watch him fail and then bury him in some dead-end job if he didn't accidentally kill himself first. "You're the one who's gonna be doin' all the hard work."

The moment the door hisses shut behind him, I tap the button on my PADD that activates the communicator function.

"Tucker to Eloise. Tell me I'm done?" I deliberately put a little whimper in my tone. I think it amuses her to think she's worn me out. 

_"I have nothing more for you, Commodore,"_ she tells me sweetly through the small speaker in the PADD. _"I would say you are free for dinner now, but I doubt you are finished. You always seem to find one more thing that I don't have on the schedule."_

"An' you're an angel for puttin' up with me," I tell her as I head out of the conference room and make my way to the mess hall.

 _"An angel?_ Non _. I do it for the little gifts you bring me."_

Just hearing her talk often makes me feel that she thinks she indulges me like a small child or an unusually devoted housecat, and I don't particularly mind, though I suddenly wonder how she would react to finding a dead mouse artfully displayed on her desk some morning. I genuinely like Eloise as a person, and God knows, I don't go out of my way to make her job any easier. I just do what needs doing, because that's my duty, and I trust her to keep everything organized. Occasionally I remember to thank her with flowers, subtle perfume, tasteful jewelry, or some fancy chocolates from a shop in Paris she once mentioned frequenting as a child, but the truth is, having Eloise work for me is like turning the tap and having water come out of the faucet: She does her job so efficiently that I _do_ take her for granted, even though I make an honest effort not to. 

"When's the last time I said thank you?" I ask as I continue on my way to the mess.

 _"Every day, Commodore,"_ she responds. _"Your manners are impeccable."_

"Well, I'm not just bein' polite, darlin'," I say, because it needs saying, more often than it gets said. "I really am grateful for everything you do, an' I couldn't manage half of what I do in a day without you. I'm sorry if I don't say that often enough."

 _"There is no need to thank me, Commodore,"_ her tone is almost tender as it comes through the PADD. _"It is all … 'part of the service', as they say. But it is nice to feel appreciated. Now, eat your dinner. Chastain out."_

Not many subordinates could get away with terminating a communication with their CO that way, but Eloise is special, and I know why she did it. It's not possible to overstate how much I've come to rely on her, and no matter how sincerely I say it, _thank you_ isn't nearly enough to express my gratitude. I've no doubt my days would go to shit in a matter of minutes without Eloise scheduling and rescheduling every one of them. The station itself would probably fall apart in a day or two. So if she thinks I wouldn't be able to feed, bathe, or dress myself without her planning a time for it, she's probably right.

And she's right this evening.

I've hardly gotten dinner down me when I head for my office and ask Eloise to get Mike and Anna up here for a private meeting. I’ve managed things so far without either of them knowing what’s really going on, but from here on in I’m going to need them to understand the situation. It goes without saying that they’ll back me up even without an explanation, but in effectively taking the sole surviving member of the Triad prisoner I’m stepping so far out of my authority that I don’t suppose even they would believe it of me if I didn’t tell them in person. It’s going to have to be managed, so carefully managed that I’m not even sure I _could_ do it on my own; but I can't involve Eloise. I've never made her a part of my off-the-books operations and I'm not about to start now. Running the man who runs the Empire's busiest station is enough responsibility for anyone, especially when he hardly ever manages to stick to your carefully laid plans anyway. Though I’ve already got Amanda onside, and she’s worth a small army in herself, she’s still only a corporal and doesn’t have the intricate knowledge of the station and its personnel that my two sidekicks here do.

I managed to coax a plate of nibbles out of the chef before I left the mess, and Eloise brings in coffees. Even though strictly speaking the alpha shift ended an hour ago, I know Anna and Mike won’t mind coming up – they trust me that I wouldn’t abuse the privilege of having them on call whenever they’re needed. I tell my long-suffering PA to take herself off for the night, too, and leave whatever the hell it is she’s been putting in overtime on; she’ll be on call for the morning meeting first thing, and I don’t know what I’d do without her making sense of the proceedings and putting them down as a proper record.

Anna comes in first, with Mike just a minute or so behind her – at a guess he’s been in the gym, because he’s wearing a tank top and tracksuit pants, whereas she must have been in the shower. She’s pulled on some loungewear, soft, draped velour bottoms and a matching, flowy top, but there are still wet strands in her chestnut hair as if she didn’t finish drying it properly.

“Something up, Boss?” Mike takes a seat across the desk from me and reaches for a coffee. We’re off duty, and our behavior reflects that.

“You could say that.” I grin.

“There any whisky to go with this? I think I’m gonna need it.” Hess scowls at me over the cup.

Well, she has a point. I reach into the cupboard behind me, bring out a bottle and tip a generous measure into each of the cups. “Here. Let’s drink a toast to probably the stupidest risk I ever decided to take.”

Mike groans. “Do we want to hear this?”

“No. We don’t.” 

“Well, probably not, but you’re gonna hear about it anyway.” I take a sip – or more like a swig – of my own heavily laced coffee, and produce the nearest I can get to a devil-may-care smile at them both. “You know I announced that General Reed is ‘in mournin’’ for his fellow officers.”

Anna covers her eyes. “I knew this was a bad idea,” she moans.

“Fact is, he’s not in mournin’ at all. He’s in the Bunker, and basic’ly my prisoner."

Usually, Anna's as cool as they come. I don't think I've ever known anyone with steadier nerves or more patience, which is part of the reason I stuck her with Kelby when I brought him onto the station last year. But every once in a while, she kicks off, and when she does, she's got a mouth on her that would make a drunken Klingon blush with shame.

Truth be told, I wonder if that might be where she's learned some of the language she's using right now. 

While Anna vents her spleen against my eardrums, Mike takes the opportunity to top up his coffee – with more whisky. The bottle chitters against his mug with the trembling of his hand, but that and the quantity of liquor he's pouring himself are the only indications of how upset he is. Oddly enough, it makes me think how courageous he is – he and Anna both, that they can swallow my news with nothing more than some profanity and a strong drink. Mike drains about half the mug, and tops it up again.

When he sets the bottle down this time, I put it away. His adrenaline will probably burn off what he's had so far and what he has left will be enough to give him a good buzz for the next several hours, but I don't need him drunk tonight and hungover in the morning. I know he won't blab, but there's all kinds of other mistakes he could make if he's impaired, and if something happened on the job because of it, there's no way it wouldn't make it into the accident report. I saw to that with the reforms I implemented when I took command of the station because it seems being held accountable when things go wrong makes people a whole lot more careful to see that they go right. I’m more than willing to retrain and re-educate rather than punish if that’s what it takes, but that doesn’t excuse the facts being set down in black and white in the first place so everyone knows what’s what.

While I've been busy admiring my people and thinking about their well-being, Anna has simmered down – a little. She's gone from ranting and raving to grumbling and snarling, and when she finally reaches the end of her fit, she slams both hands down on my desk and gets right up in my face, leaving no more than a few centimeters between us.

"What the _fuck_ were you _thinking_?" she snarls at me.

Anna is a friend. A good friend. Matter of fact, I'd say she, Mike, and Liz Cutler are my _best_ friends, and if I haven't given Anna the same leeway I've given Liz, it's only because she's never needed it. Besides, if Anna ever got mad enough to hit me, it wouldn't be an open-handed slap on the arm, and it wouldn't be just the one blow. We'd probably both end up in the infirmary, me with a busted jaw and her with a busted hand. I saw her in action, just the once, back on _Enterprise_ , when some Orion rebels managed to breach engineering, and I'm not too sure she couldn't take me in a fair fight.

But _nobody_ talks to me like that.

So I don't move as she looms over me, I don't even blink. I just give her a hard look and say levelly, "Right now, I'm thinkin' you might want to step back an' rephrase that question, Commander."

For a moment, the only indication she's heard me is a slight widening of her eyes and a sharply indrawn breath. Then she does exactly what I suggested and steps back. Dropping into her chair, she shakes her head and runs her fingers through her hair.

"Christ, Chief, I'm sorry," she says with a gusty sigh. "But seriously, _what the hell_?"

"Apology accepted, Anna." I give her another smile, not the cocky grin I had when I first announced my apparent lapse into insanity, but a real smile that I hope conveys all my affection and respect for both her and Mike. "An' what I was _thinkin'_ was that that if we could get the general on-side, we could do a whole lot of good for a whole lot of people instead of just the penny-ante stuff we run through the station here."

The brief confrontation between Anna and me has sobered Rostov up quicker than he could get drunk, and when he joins the conversation now, he sounds both sensible and reasonable. 

"That's a pretty big _if,_ Boss – how do you expect to accomplish it?"

As I give them the rundown of what was going on in the secure part of Sickbay over the past year, I’m not smiling anymore; none of this is even remotely funny. I don't give them a minute-by-minute accounting, but I don't spare them the ugly details either. I tell them about the surgery and the drugs and hormones that altered Reed’s body to let him carry a child. I tell them about the way he was impregnated, not in some tidy lab by a medical procedure, but by being raped repeatedly by probably the only two people he'd ever loved and trusted. I tell them how he was kept high as a kite and immobilized, first strapped to a bio-bed and then drowned in Kelby's fish tank, for months on end.

“He was drugged, right up to his eyeballs for a long time," I tell them. "I don't think he even knew his own name."

They’re staring at me like I’ve grown an extra head. Probably wondering how the hell I could possibly have sat back and let such a diabolical thing happen on my station, on my watch. I can't really blame them, but I don't know what I could have done differently without endangering a lot more innocent people.

“Fact is, I knew it was goin’ on. I didn’t like it, but Alpha … well, I’m sure you know why arguin’ with _his_ orders wasn’t on the agenda. An’ Reed wasn’t someone it’s easy to feel pity for, though the longer it went on the worse I felt – whatever he’d done, an’ God knows he’d done some cruel shit in his time, he didn’t deserve the way he was bein' used, just like a goddamn lab rat, not even like a human bein’ anymore.”

Mike takes a gulp of his coffee and drinks it like it’s water. “The explosion?” he whispers, his face pale.

“I set it up.” I answer slowly and deliberately. “You know that this station’s full of booby traps I can set off whenever I want to, just in case something happens. I’d half made up my mind to take out all three of them and Phlox, along with whatever it was that Reed was about to give birth to. But almost at the last minute Reed got a single chance to speak to me. He didn’t have time to say much an’ he surely knew it was no use askin’ me for help, but what he did do was ask me to kill him an’ the baby as well. He said it would be the ‘end of Humanity’.”

“A poor little _baby?_ ” gasps Anna, appalled.

I’m not going to tell them about the deformities I read about in the medical report on the infant, or the fact that the transporter identified him as having alien DNA. But I do say that I fully believe that Reed was justified in reading the situation the way he did, and then I go on to explain how I gave him the means to prove he meant what he said by triggering the explosion that blew out Sickbay, and then how I got him and Liz Cutler out in the five micro-second delay between his kicking the plate back and the short circuit igniting the coolant gas.

“I know that a lot of innocent people lost their lives in that explosion,” I continue grimly. “I know they cooperated with somethin’ that was vile in anyone’s book, but that said, I don’t suppose any of them were given a choice about it. I wish there was some way I could’ve gotten them out of there. But soon’s the labor started, the place was locked up tighter’n Fort Knox, it was as much as even I could do to get in an' out just the once, an’ I doubt if they’d have let me in at all once the baby arrived. Whoever was in there, stayed there. Whoever wasn’t, didn’t get in.

"But I thought Reed could be useful." I look at their dubious faces and in my heart I can’t blame them, but I press on, regardless. "An' I thought, after what he's been through, he might be a little more inclined to be convinced that improvin' life for people in the Empire is as worthy a use of his power as wagin' war on the aliens outside of our borders and stompin' out rebellions within them. Maybe he'll even come to realize that the rebellions would die down if he just made things a little easier for the people at home."

“If you'd asked me, I'd have said you should have just left him there,” growls Mike, taking another swig. “Holy Moses, Boss, what the hell are you gonna _do_ with him?”

“I would have agreed with you, Mike, right up till the moment when he used his one an’ only chance to warn us he had to die. That showed me there’s a scrap of decency in him somewhere, an’ my plan is to try to dig it out. You don’t need me to tell you how much power he has, but think of what he could achieve if he decided to use that power to help people rather than terrorize them.

“Right now, he hasn’t got the strength to do anything. Hell, he’s so battered an’ worn out he can’t even stand on his own two feet, an’ it’ll take months for him to recover from what they did to his body, even apart from the surgery he’ll have to have. But all that time I’m gonna make sure he has kind treatment and I’m gonna do my damnedest to persuade him he doesn’t have to be a monster."

"I don't know, Chief," Anna grumbles, shooting me a doubtful glance. "Sounds to me like you're trying to turn a cobra into a pet by keeping it warm inside your shirt."

“I know you think I’m crazy. But maybe I’m not takin’ as much of a risk as you may think.” I harden my voice and lift my wrist, showing them the cuff there. “I had Liz implant a device in his chest that’s linked to trackers in the Bunker an' to this cuff when I’m within range. He tries to go anywhere he shouldn’t, he’ll get a warnin’ from it. He keeps goin’, an' his heart will stop. An’ if he tries to get up to his old tricks and hurts anyone, I’ll use it to kill him.”

"The General can strike as fast as any snake, Boss," Rostov points out. "And if he decides to do it, chances are, someone is going to die before you can kill him."

"I realize that's a possibility, Michael, or it will be when he gets some strength back – at the moment, he can't even hold a glass of water," I tell him. "But the people involved in this scheme of mine chose to help me anyway."

"So, it's just Mike and me who don't get the choice, huh?" Anna blurts out, shocking me.

"Anna!" Mike snaps.

"No, Mike, I'm still pissed off!" she says imperiously. "Now, the three of us have always been honest with each other, and I need to say this, so the commodore needs to hear it."

Hearing her call me 'the commodore' makes me itchy, like maybe I've overestimated the risks she's willing to take for me. I can't say I blame her if that's the case, but it's still a surprise.

She takes another swig of her coffee, puts down the mug and faces me, her expression earnest. "Time was, Chief, when you got a crazy idea, you came to Mike and me about it. We'd talk it over; you'd ask us what we thought of it. Then, once you convinced us it was a good idea, you'd ask us to help refine the plan, make it as safe as possible, and protect our people as well as we could.

"If we didn't want to get involved, that was always an option, too, but I don't think we ever turned you down."

"No, you never did," I admit, shaking my head as I begin to feel dismay at my own assumptions. "I don’t know what I ever did to earn the loyalty the two of you have shown me, but I'm sure I don't deserve it; an' if you feel I've taken it for granted, I'm sorry."

"It's not just what I _feel_ , Chief, it's what you've _done_." 

Anna's never been one to mince words, and she won't tolerate it from anyone around her either. Though she never flinches from hearing a harsh truth aimed in her direction if it’s fair.

I say exactly what comes into my head, then. "You're right, Anna, that's just what I've done. The best I can offer you is another apology. I really am sorry, an' if either or both of you want to walk away right now, the door's not locked. I trust you two to keep what I've said here to yourselves."

"It's not that simple, Chief," Anna says, shaking her head, "because now we _know_ . Our only choices are to go along with you or turn you in. Just turning a blind eye is not an option because if things don't go your way, they're going to go _really_ bad. There'll be an investigation, and sooner or later someone will find out about this meeting. Whether they question Eloise and she doesn't know to lie about it or they see Mike and me coming into the command center after our shifts, they'll know. Then they'll want to know what we were meeting about."

"And depending on who's doing the asking and what they're hoping to accomplish, we might not be able to lie to them for long," Rostov realizes.

Now my heart sinks right down to my toes. Never in a million years would I have thought that they wouldn't want to be involved in this scheme. Some people might argue that it doesn't matter what they want, as their CO I have the right to order them to participate; but not only do I _not_ have the right to issue illegal orders, they also have the duty to defy them. Even with the blessings of the Empress herself, I'm treading a pretty fine line. It's only ever mentioned when someone new takes power and decides to clean house, but the government and the military and people working in an official capacity on their behalf, can, and regularly do, commit crimes. If someone allied with Reed got wind of what I was up to and had enough power to stir up an investigation, I reckon I'd be filleted right alongside the Empress if I got caught. At least if they mutinied, Mike and Anna would die quickly. As for the other people involved, well, I made sure they all had rabbit holes to run to before I ever brought them to the Bunker, much less introduced them to the General.

It's on the tip of my tongue to say there just wasn't time to consult with my right and left hands, but the fact is, Reed was on the station for almost a year. Even though the decision about rigging the explosion with a delay was made in a moment of insane hope, I didn't _have_ to program the shuttle to beam him out, and I still had a couple of weeks to loop in Mike and Anna. I just, for whatever reason, didn't. I can't even say I was protecting them, because whether it's kidnapping General Reed or committing treason by repurposing a small percentage of the leftover supplies and salvaged parts from decommissioned ships to humanitarian uses, we'll all be just as dead if we're ever caught.

"Guys, I'm sorry. I never meant to take advantage of you," I assure them sincerely. "I certainly hope you don't think I see you as my lackeys, bound to do whatever I tell you just because you work for me. I guess I always thought of us more like the Three Musketeers – all for one and one for all. I just – I guess I assumed you'd be on board. 

"I meant what I said: if you want out, there's the door. I only ask that, if you feel you need to turn me in…" My mind is racing. What in the hell would I do without them? "… give me an hour's notice."

Anna doesn't smile now, but the warmth in her eyes is as comforting as any hug. "Apology accepted, Chief." She looks at Mike, and he nods, silently giving her permission to speak for him as well. "We're not going to run out on you, and there's no way in hell we'd ever turn you in. Just, remember that you're not in this alone, ok? We trust you, and we believe in what you're doing, but we can help you better and keep us all safer if you keep us in the loop."

Mike nods again, tips his head toward Anna, and tells me, "What she said."

It'd be a lie to say my eyes weren't prickling. I take another swig of my coffee to hide the sound of swallowing the lump that's formed in my throat.

"I know I just said this, but it bears repeatin': I don't know what I ever did to earn your loyalty, an' I really don't think I deserve it, but I sure do appreciate it."

"We know," Mike says with a wink.

“Now, what about the baby?” asks Anna, looking like she’s getting back to business. “Was it okay? Where is it now?”

I shake my head regretfully. “It didn’t survive transport.”

A part of me is relieved that neither of them questions that fact. I’d like to think that neither of them would credit the idea that I’m capable of arranging for an innocent child _not_ to survive, but though I can’t say for sure that if the stakes really were high enough I wouldn’t take steps to make sure this particular baby didn’t, it’s not something I’d ever _want_ to do.

“Thing is, though, I’m sure you both realize that turnin’ a guy like Reed is goin’ to be one hell of a job, _if_ it can be done at all. I’ve already taken steps to recruit someone who’s had a whole lot of experience dealin’ with battle-damaged veterans, an’ Liz is goin’ to be the first stop with his daily medical care, under the supervision of a qualified doctor of course.

“I’ll keep him in the Bunker till it’s safe for him to be transferred to the station here. Naturally that’s goin’ to have to be done completely on the downlow. Not only would there almost certainly be a rescue attempt if it was discovered I’m holdin’ him prisoner – an’ in view of who’d be attemptin’ the rescue I damn well wouldn’t want to bet against it bein’ successful, and then the fat would really be in the fire – but there might also be an attempt to kill him while he’s vulnerable.

“There are secured areas of the station as you know, an’ I intend to keep him in one of them. But if I’m gonna stand a chance in hell of teachin’ him to trust me an’ maybe even eventually to work with me, that’s gonna mean I have to spend a lot of time with him. He may not respond to me all that well in person, but sure as eggs he won’t respond to a vid-link. So you two can expect me to be askin' y'all for coverage at least once a week."

"That where you were yesterday?" Mike asks.

"Yep, for part of the afternoon an' most of the evenin'," I tell him. "The general had been comatose since the explosion an' had just come around while I was there, so I was able to tell him what was up, though how much he really understood an' how much he'll remember next time he wakes up is hard to tell. I'm sure the only thing he really believes right now is that he's still alive an' he's my prisoner, unless he thinks he actually died in the blast, in which case he probably thinks he's in hell an' I'm his own, personal demon." I grin at that. For all that I was sorry for what those bastards did to him, I can’t deny that some of me is going to enjoy having the upper hand of General Malcolm Reed for a while – including having the capability to kill him with one press of my thumb.

Anna takes another swig of coffee. For a moment she stares down into the mug, and then raises a deeply troubled face and asks the inevitable question. “Boss, what happens if this doesn’t work?”

There’s a silence.

“Guess you’ve already decided that, then,” says Mike heavily.

“I’d rather cross that bridge if an’ when we come to it, but yeah, I’ve already realized I won’t have a hell of a lot of options if we do.”

“And would you be okay with _doing_ that?”

The fact is, I wouldn't do it for myself – at least not anymore – but there are already too many people out on this limb with me. I can't risk a vengeful Reed getting the chance to saw it off behind us. Again, I’m amazed by the loyalty people have shown me. As good as it makes me feel to know they trust me so much, sometimes it’s a hell of a heavy weight to carry.

“If it was a choice between lettin’ a murderin’ bastard loose to take his revenge on all of us, or gettin’ my hands dirty killin’ him so he never got the chance to, then yeah, I would.”

I let my words hang in the air, cold as the fact of murder.

* * *

**Chapter Twenty**

**Of Beans and the Small Matter of Eyesight**

_General Malcolm Reed_

I awaken at some point – guessing by the number of times Ms. Cutler has urged me to suck down broth and juice, I think it's my third or fourth day at _Chez_ Tucker (my second or third waking day at any rate) and I want to say ‘in the morning’, but without the use of my eyes, I have no way of knowing – to feel a weight pressing down on my chest, making it difficult to breathe. At first, I naturally think it’s Commodore Tucker's idea of an amusing little wake-up call, fucking with my heart rate to see how much he can manipulate it before I notice enough to wake up. But then something tickles my face. 

I reach up warily to touch it, and discover it’s soft and warm.

And it purrs.

Evidently feeling we’ve had sufficient introduction, it shifts and begins vigorously scrubbing the tender flesh on the inside of my right wrist with something that feels like sandpaper. On a whim, I growl at it, low and soft in my throat. The scrubbing stops for a moment, and I hear the tiniest little huff – not a hiss – of … well … apparently it's derision, for the scrubbing resumes promptly. It finds a sensitive spot where its ministrations produce a sensation that is a most uncomfortable combination of ticklish and painful, and I try to pull my hand away.

Quicker than a heartbeat, there’s a tiny thud on the back of my hand, and pinpricks there, holding me fast. Thinking of the reaction I got to the growl, I try a whimper. The treatment stops again, for just a moment, the weight shifts slightly, and then the treatment resumes once more, in a different spot that I find more tolerable. The pinpricks remain. A clear message that I'd best not try to escape.

Hell’s bells and buckets of blood! I'm being held prisoner and subjected to a bed bath by a housecat. How low are the mighty fallen.

I sigh. Which is difficult in itself, with the pressure on my ribs. As flattered as I am by the company (cats are choosy beasts), I need to shift the weight off my chest. Fortunately, my free hand is on the side of the bed that has the controls. Not being able to see them, I have to poke a couple of buttons before I find the one that raises my upper body.

Just as we pass a forty-five degree angle, the claws come out, and sink into my chest, the back of my hand, and my ribs – hard enough to hurt, but I don't think it's drawn any blood. 

"Listen, you hairy little bastard," I mutter. "I need to be able to breathe."

I get a very stubborn-sounding, "MrrrOW!" in return.

I give it back an exasperated sigh.

Vaguely, I recall someone – Aunt Sherrie, perhaps – teaching me the proper way to hold a cat. I carefully liberate my right hand and grope until I find the scruff, stroke my left hand down the back to its bum, and gently lift it off my chest. It takes more effort than I might imagine, more due to the fact that I am still weak as a kitten than because it is clinging to my hospital gown – fortunately the claws that were digging into my chest are retracted enough not to take skin with them, presumably because their owner recognises my determination that it has to be moved. In my hands, it doesn't feel like a very large cat, but to the muscles in my arms, it could weigh ten kilos.

I _could_ just chuck it on the floor, but the long-distant spectre of Aunt Sherrie scowls at me for the idea. Not knowing how much room is on the edge of the bed or how far away the floor is, I opt for settling it in my lap. Before I can withdraw both hands, it has caught my right one again and resumes scrubbing me raw.

I can't help the chuckle that escapes. 

"Determined little beast, aren't you?"

At least my left hand is free and I can finish organising myself into a slightly more upright position.

I doze quietly for I don't know how long, waking each time to feel the cat still nestled in my lap, still scrubbing away. Although soothing in one way, the constant small friction prevents me from nodding off into a deeper sleep. Distractedly, I wonder if I'll ever be clean, and my thoughts immediately skitter away from memories that crash over me in waves without warning and are still absolutely unbearable. I could spend the rest of my life padlocked at the foot of the Niagara Falls and still feel soiled from head to foot.

I’m not blind to the irony. I’ll admit that I earned hell a hundred times over; that I was utterly without mercy when others were at mine. I had no right to expect my own case to be any different.

But – for _them_ to _...._

Sensing my distress, I think, the cat purrs more loudly and butts its head against my palm. I pet it absently and focus all my attention determinedly on the sound of the tiny motorboat filling the room. More than merely calming, it lifts my spirits. 

I hear a latch click and the door open, and the cat gives my hand a tiny lick when I tense.

"Malcolm? It's Liz," says my visitor. "I have someone with me."

I hear two sets of footsteps cross the room, one significantly heavier than the other. ‘Someone’ is either a man, or a very large woman.

"I see you've met Beans." I hear the smile in her voice. “Hi, sweetie! You’ve introduced yourself to Malcolm already – aren’t you a clever girl!”

" _‘Beans’_!" I say in disbelief. "What kind of bloody name is that?"

Small movements in the furry body on my lap suggest that Beans is getting extra fuss; presumably Liz is chucking her under the chin or something. "Commodore Tucker says she gets gassy, but I've never seen – or heard or smelled – any evidence of that."

A deep, warm chuckle tells me Someone is a man, and its direction and timbre suggests he’s taller than Liz and probably large-chested. "Well, first time Ah ever met her was just after she turned up here." 

His voice is soft and carries just a hint of a lazy drawl. With its broad vowels and slow cadence, almost turning some of the one-syllable words into two, it's definitely an accent of the American South or West – though not Floridian, if Tucker's not-so-dulcet tones are in any way representative of that part of the United States. But I have no ear for languages, so I can't narrow it down more than that. 

"She chased her tail till she made herself dizzy, and when she fell over on mah foot, she wasn't done playing, so she started attacking mah shoelaces," he continues. "Ah told Trip she was full o' beans, and that's where she gets her name."

The accent and the casual reference to Tucker slot into place.

"You're Doctor Salazar," I presume.

"That's right," he says. "You can call me Miguel."

"Ohhh, I think 'Doctor' will do for now."

There's a silence, and I imagine him exchanging a look with Cutler. 

"All right, then, Mr. Reed…"

" _General_."

"General Reed," he corrects himself in the exact same tone he used for _mister_ and continues without skipping a beat, "Doctor'll do just fine. Ah'm sorry Ah wasn't here to greet you when you first woke up, but Ah _do_ have a day job."

"With a name like Salazar, I would have expected you to sound more…Latino," I remark. Not that I'm interested. I just don't know why he's here now, and I'm feeling wary again, and want to postpone whatever he's planning to do to me.

"Well, Ah'm sorry to disappoint," he says, and I can hear a smile in his voice. "You _do_ know Latino is really just a broad descriptor of a person's heritage, not an accent? Ah can do a respectable Mexican accent, _eef joo laike_ . All Ah gotta do is start _talkeen como mi abuelita_."

It's the vowels. They're the same in almost any Spanish-speaker's accent, and they remind me so much of Em, I respond physically. My muscles tense, my chest gets tight, my hands are instantly clammy and I feel slightly queasy. Even my knees get in on the act, jerking upwards defensively.

"Miguel," Liz's voice is barely above a whisper, but she is chastising him.

Beans makes a small sound of discontent, and I realize I’m squeezing her far too tightly. I force myself to relax and take a deep breath. 

No one is speaking, no one is moving, and in my current state, the silence is terrifying. I speak, partly just to fill it.

"I didn't mean to cause any offence," I say tersely. It's not meant as an apology, just a statement of fact. "I just noticed a bit of a regional accent, and it wasn't what I was expecting." Though I wonder if any amount of preparation would have enabled me to hear something that roused so many memories without reacting.

"So, if mah surname was Chang, would you have expected me to sound Chinese?"

"Miguel, stop it!" Liz interrupts before I have to think of a response. "It's not fair when he can't see that you're teasing. He's just messing with you, Malcolm. He did the same thing to me."

"Ah'm sorry, General," he apologizes, and I hear sincerity mingled with the smirk in his voice. "Liz is right. Ah shouldn't be teasing you. Ah just think it's funny how many people _still_ don't realize how diverse America is. Mah dad's side o' the family is Mexican. His people moved to Texas when he was just a baby. Mah mom can trace one branch o' her family all the way back to a failed artists' utopia just west o' Dallas called La Reunion. She's a mix o' French, Swiss, Flemish, German, and only-God-knows-what. Ah speak fluent Spanish, if it matters, but Ah just consider myself a Texan."

I really don't care, so I don't bother to respond. Beans butts my hand again; in my distraction I have neglected her.

After a moment of silence he says, "Ah was wondering if you thought maybe it was time we took those bandages off your eyes?"

"Oh, Gods yes!" I tell him. I don't care how eager – or desperate – it makes me sound. My hands haven’t been restrained, so I could have removed the bandages any time I wanted, but fearing the loss of my vision, I have obediently left them in place. Now that my doctor seems to think I can do without them, I want them off, as much to relieve the crushing boredom of sitting in perpetual darkness as to ease the anxiety of not seeing what potential threats are coming at me and the frustration of complete dependence.

Doctor Salazar chuckles again. It’s a melodious sound. More years ago than I care to remember, Aunt Sherrie read me and Maddie a story about three ghosts visiting an old miser at Christmas, and I can’t help feeling that the Ghost of Christmas Present would sound very like Doctor Salazar.

"All right then, Ah'll just get my kit set up here," he says, "and we'll get underway."

"Your kit?" In the effort to appear polite, I try to sound more curious than wary. Beans starts licking the web of skin between my thumb and index finger. However well I might hide my anxiety from other people, I suppose it's possible I am giving off some kind of pheromone that she can sense, and she has decided to try to calm me. 

"Saline and sterile gauze pads for washing your eyelids, a sterile, buffered solution for rinsing the eyes themselves," he says as I hear things rustling and thumping on the bedside table. "Think about all the stuff the Sandman leaves in your eyes overnight, then consider that you've been several days without washing them properly….Ms. Elizabeth, would you turn the lights down to ten percent for me?"

"Yes, Doctor," she replies, and I hear her light footsteps cross the room. 

I don't like having her so far away. She is a known quantity. Even blind, I feel I can trust her not to do anything unexpected. 

Beans must sense my increasing stress. She turns in my lap and starts butting against my left hand, asking me to pet her some more, and purring loudly when I do.

On the one hand, Salazar is very considerate, telling me at each stage what he is about to do and then executing it slowly and gently. On the other hand, he is infuriating, because all I want is to _see_ again.

"Now, Ah'm gonna take the pads off, General," he tells me. " _Don't_ try to open your eyes just yet. If there's a lot of matter on your eyelids, Ah'm gonna want to clean that off first so it doesn't fall into your eyes, understand?"

"I understand," I tell him, trying not to sound too irritable on the chance that he might just tell me to go fuck myself and leave. Not that I couldn't just remove the bandages myself, but I've no idea what additional care I might require afterwards, and however subservient I may have to be for the present, I _cannot_ risk losing my sight. "Just bloody get on with it, will you?"

"Yes, sir," he replies. I can hear amusement in his tone and wonder if, at this proximity, my fist could find his mouth without my eyes to guide it. Long experience in brutality suggests it probably could, or at least it could have done if my muscles didn’t have the tone of wet washing. Between weakness and crap co-ordination, though, I’d most likely end up slapping myself in the belly, so it seems prudent on all fronts to refrain from experimenting.

Beans has begun washing my left hand. I wonder what I must taste like to her. Probably very salty at the moment, because even mild anxiety increases the activity of the skin’s sweat glands, and I’ve got a total stranger messing with my eyes. ‘Mild’ would not accurately describe my anxiety level right now.

I feel the tape peel away, along with what feels like a good section of my right brow going with it.

"Damn that Trip!" Doctor Salazar grumbles vehemently. "Ah told him to use paper tape, not adhesive, on the skin."

He very gently bathes my eyes. The water, to my surprise, is pleasantly warm. The process seems to take forever; patience, although a skill I’ve learned hard and thoroughly, has never come easily to me, and now with my eyesight in the balance it’s more difficult than ever.

Finally, he says, "All right, very slowly, you can open your eyes."

I do as he says, and to my horror, the amber aura that surrounded everything when I spoke to Tucker has been replaced by a thick, milky haze. I close my eyes tightly and blink them open. 

Something… _uncomfortable_ moves under my eyelids, and I get flashes of clarity, but each time the fog falls over my vision in less than a second.

Beans issues a loud 'MrrOW!' – a warning that I am again squeezing her too tightly.

I let her go and reach up to try to rub the scales from my eyes, and someone gently but firmly catches hold of my wrists. From the size of the hands, I don't think it's Liz.

A thousand images, each more horrifying than the last, of what he could do to me, enfeebled as I am, spill through my brain and weakly but desperately, I try to pull away.

" _Don't_ rub your eyes," says the doctor impatiently. "Especially after you've been petting that darned cat. Tell me what's going on. Tell me what you're seeing."

The part of me that remembers what it was like to be General Reed, Terror of the Empire, thinks he has a lot more courage than sense, or perhaps is just plain suicidal, to be putting his hands on me in such a way. But the part of me that remembers all too clearly the endless days, weeks, and months lying restrained and exposed on a biobed, tubes running into me here, and out of me there, my abdomen swelling with the growing demon spawn, can barely speak past the desperate urge to get free of even this gentle grasp.

"Let _go_ of me!" I gasp breathlessly, my whole body twitching in the attempt to struggle against captivity.

He promptly lowers my hands to my lap and gently covers them with one of his own, reinforcing his admonishment not to touch my eyes. At least he's not gripping my wrists anymore. Maybe if I stay very still, he'll stop touching me altogether.

After another minute or so, he does withdraw his touch completely, and I'm finally able to relax enough to breathe again.

"Ah'm sorry if that made you uncomfortable, General," he says. "But there could be some dried matter in your eyes or on your lids and Ah didn't want you rubbing them and scratching your corneas."

Under the circumstances, I can accept that his error was not malicious. "Just see that you don't do it again," I order gruffly.

"Of course, sir. Now, can you tell me what you see?"

I do my best to describe the distinct lack of view and the disturbing sensation when I blink, but with my heart in my throat, it's difficult to force the words past it. 

He keeps grunting. "Uh-huh. Uh-huh."

Then I feel gentle fingers under my chin. "Tip your head back for me and look at the ceiling."

A bright light flashes across the haze and I flinch away from it. 

"Try to keep your eyes open for me, General, and look straight ahead."

I do my best, and after a moment the light becomes bearable. 

"Ah need to have a closer look." There’s no doubt that he knows exactly what my instinctive reaction will be to someone getting close to me, because he adds, "Try not to fight me."

I'm not sure precisely what he means until I feel his gloved fingers on my face, pushing my eyelids back. I clench my fists in response to the unexpected, oddly intimate invasion of my personal space, and Beans murmurs again.

After a moment, Salazar straightens up. "It appears to be just the regular matter that your eyes produce when you sleep, which has accumulated behind your eyelids. Ah think Ah can clear the haze for you pretty quick, but it will be uncomfortable. It would be better if you could just wait and…"

"No." I manage not to shout, but I’m adamant. "Do it now."

"…you'll eventually blink it away." He continues exactly as if I hadn’t spoken, and I hear a small huff of exasperation. He didn't like being interrupted, and he probably doesn't like taking orders. Well, that's just tough luck. It's my bloody eyes we're talking about. I need to know they still work, and I need to know _now_.

"All right, General, we'll do it the hard way, but you absolutely cannot move, understand?"

"I can have tremendous willpower, when it's required, Doctor," I growl, "but if you try to hurt me–”

I can actually feel him withdraw from me as he dares to cut me off, and when he speaks, it's almost double-time compared to his rate of speech a moment ago.

"There may well be some discomf'rt, Gineral," he declares, his accent thickening noticeably with his irritation. "Not knowin' yer pain tolerance, Ah am in no position to say whether it'll hurt or yew not, but there is no way in _hail_ Ah would seek to harm a patient. If that's wut yew were implyin', Gineral, Ah guess Ah c'n say goodbye rahght now an' yew c'n go find yer _own_ damned doctor."

"Miguel!" Liz objects. She sounds a bit panicky, and that scares me too, though I can’t show it. I’ve spent my life among people who’d have taken the first chance they could get to inflict damage on me, and I’m too used to intimidating them out of the idea. It’s an alien concept that this time I may have gone too far.

"Ah'm sorry, Ms. 'Lizabeth, but we're gonna start out the way we intend to continue, the Gineral an' me, an' he mahght as well learn rahght now that Ah don't take _no_ shit from _no-body!_ Ah'm up-to-date on mah malpractice _in_ -surance, an' mah _in_ -surance company has a damned good lawyer. If Ah do make a mistake, which _is_ unlahkely, Ah'm covered.

"Now, what'll it be, Gineral?" he addresses me again, his voice stern. "Yew wanna rephrase that threat yew was a-makin'?"

Beans growls in my lap, and I realize I am again clenching my fists in her fur. She must be the most patient of cats to put up with the mistreatment, and I carefully disengage my fingers, fully expecting her to leap off the bed and dart away. Instead, she shifts position, resumes purring, and returns to licking my wrist.

Time was when neither his malpractice _in-surance_ nor his _damned good lawyer_ would have stood a prayer of saving his skin from being removed a millimetre at a time if he’d made a balls-up of his care of my eyesight. However, times have changed, and I’m bitterly aware of that fact. The wheel of fortune has turned, and I’m on the underside of it now. During the events of the last months, I’ve felt as though it were literally grinding me into the roadway.

Tucker’s momentary merciful impulse may have saved me from what I believed would be death by my own act, but in terms of power over myself or anyone else, my situation hasn’t actually changed much.

It will, if I have any say in the matter. However long it takes, it will. But for the present, the wheel appears to be stationary, and I must bide my time with the best patience I can muster, and wait for my chance.

So being realistic, I know I am in no position to find myself without skilled medical care, and even I can acknowledge the fact that my wariness and mistrust of this Salazar are all owing to what someone else did – and what others would undoubtedly have done, if they’d had the chance. I am not, in my current state, someone to be feared, so expediency dictates that I must apologize. If only to mollify him for the time being.

The wheel of fortune may yet move on, and if that happens Doctor Salazar may possibly live to regret that he didn’t speak to me rather more diplomatically. But that’s as maybe, and right now we have to deal with things as they are.

"I'm sorry, Doctor," I tell him levelly. "I'm sure you can understand how my experiences with my previous physician have made me leery of the medical profession in general. He was not the most ethical or compassionate of practitioners. I will try, in the future, to give you in particular the benefit of the doubt."

"From what Ah heard, your former physician wouldn't know a medical ethic if it bit him in the ass," Salazar grumbles. "Ah'll try to remember that if you get a little testy with me in the future. And Ah shouldn't have popped off at you that way. Ah'm sorry, General."

His accent has settled down, now that he's feeling contrite. And since he has summed up Phlox's ethical construction so concisely, I decide to grant him a little grace in order to store up some goodwill for myself in the future. I know what a bastard I can be, and until I am well and fit and capable of defending myself physically, I need to think in terms of pre-emptive measures. 

"Why don't we just call it quits and start again?" I suggest, this seeming a compromise that allows both of us to occupy a more neutral position.

"Suits me fine," Doctor Salazar agrees. Then, "Liz, would you mind coming over here and giving him something to hold onto before he makes cat jam?"

I feel my face heat slightly with shame to discover he knew what I was unconsciously doing to poor Beans. (‘Beans’, for pity’s sake. What a name for a bloody cat!)

"I… I didn't mean to hurt her," I murmur, faintly embarrassed – and annoyed with myself for caring whether he thinks I did or not. Let’s face it, although I’d never have hesitated to kill an animal by way of punishing anyone who cared for it, even I wouldn’t have made it suffer unnecessarily. That was always Phlox's game. Fucking Phlox! Pain is something that should have a _point_ , and making something suffer for no wrong it’s committed and no reason it can understand isn’t one of my (admittedly many) vices. 

"Don't worry about it, General," he says. "She tends to gravitate toward people who need some comforting. Matter o' fact, Ah think she'd let you squeeze her till she popped if she knew you were hurting."

Liz takes my hands then, and I am deeply grateful, though I can't find the words to say so right now. I need something to hold on to, and, strangely enough, I want to actively avoid hurting the cat. The information that the beast actually wants to comfort me makes me reluctant to reward its kindness with pain, though God knows that wouldn’t be the first time by any means that I’d done exactly that. And, it seems, am about to do so again, just with a different recipient.

Salazar has me tip my head back again. Then, as he brings a cotton-tipped swab to first my left eye and then the right, I tense and remain still as a marble statue, except for the twitching of my left foot and the acceleration of my breathing. 

His proximity is terrifying. He could so easily…but instead of the sudden agony of a ruptured eyeball, I get the most disgusting sensation of something slithering across my corneas, and then my vision clears.

"Blink a couple times," he tells me. "Let me know how it feels."

Obediently I flutter my eyelids.

"Feels like there's still something in the left one," I say, blinking some more. "Yes, it's gone cloudy again."

Once more I tip my head back. As he gently touches the swab to the surface of my eye, he explains, "This is just the goop that normally runs out o' your eyes in your sleep and makes that gritty or sticky stuff in the corners. Between the injury causing a whole lot more of it than normal and the bandages keeping it from coming out in your sleep, it just sort of gathered into clumps behind your eyelids. Since it's moist, it'll stick to anything dry, and that makes it real easy to just wind around a swab. 

"Blink again."

I do.

"How does that feel?"

"Much better," I nod.

"And your vision?"

I look around the dimly lit room. No halos, no auras, no milky fog, just…

"A little fuzzy," I reply, trying not to sound anxious; I was hoping for better. "I don't know if that's because it's dark in here or if it's still down to the damage...."

"You've been blindfolded for a week." His voice is patient, reassuring. "Give yourself at least a week to focus."

I just nod. More waiting ... but waiting for promised improvement is something I can live with if I must. And though trust is an extreme rarity in my world, I have the impression that this Doctor Miguel Salazar is as professional in his sphere as I am in mine.

"Ah'll give Liz some drops that will help if you have any residual irritation," he continues. "Keep the lights low for an hour or two, then maybe bump them up to thirty percent for an hour or so, then fifty, and so on. No reading, no looking at PADDs, an’ if you're going to look at a vid screen, you need to do it from a distance that is at least ten times the screen's diagonal measurement away."

"If you seriously think I'm going to measure…"

"Ah didn't pull these numbers out o' mah ass, General," he gruffly interrupts me again. Despite his careful treatment of my eyes, I won't forget his lack of manners; I won’t always be half-blind and thoroughly debilitated, and my time will come again, I’m determined on that. "You just spent the last week in the dark because light damaged your eyes. They're not completely better yet, but it's reached a point where keeping them covered will do more harm than good. If you want your full vision back, you'll do what Ah say. If you don't follow doctor's orders, don't be surprised if it ends up fuzzy or hazy or if you see everything with a halo or a painful glare o' light… _for the rest o' your life_."

"Well, I'm not going to argue with that," I tell him, my initial resentment chilled by his matter-of-fact tone.

"Ah didn't think you would."

He offers me his hand to shake. It’s not a nicety with which I’m particularly familiar, but _good manners cost nothing_ as Aunt Sherrie used to say, and it’s not as though it wipes anything from the scoreboard. Now I can see him properly, I assess him as being late thirties or early forties, uncommonly tall, with a lean, athletic build, curly dark hair, slightly olive-toned skin and the sort of heavy stubble-growth that makes it next to impossible to look clean-shaven, however fastidious he may be. 

When I release Liz's fingers to take his, I notice her shaking her free hand as if trying to restore circulation. Before I realize it, I’m giving her an apologetic smile and releasing her other hand as well. She smiles ruefully back at me, and as soon as my free hand is resting in my lap again, Beans is licking it.

They say animals are supposed to be good judges of character. 

I can’t help wondering if Commodore Tucker's cat is defective.


	5. 21-25

**Chapter Twenty-One**

**A New Breed**

_Major Austin Burnell_

It takes Jignesh three days to get back to me with the results of his inquiries, and when he does, I’m so pleased with his work that I allow him to read and edit the promised letter before I affix my digital signature and append it to his service record. He’s quite politic in his changes, suggesting only an addition of a single line about his diligence and promptness in completing his task, which he leaves to me to compose.

Only one of the other three officers is a member of the Dispossessed. She, like Jignesh, is not currently positioned to advance herself if there is a shuffling of personnel any time soon, but also like him, she is willing to negotiate an arrangement with me in exchange for some favours yet to be determined. She will be calling on me later today to discuss terms, and while I certainly won't be writing her a blank cheque to cash at will anytime in the future, I expect we can find some specific need of hers that I am in a position to fill.

The other two security chiefs are just MACO regulars, highly skilled and accomplished officers in their own rights – one has to be, to become head of security on a starship – but without the advanced training of the Dispossessed. I am confident in Jignesh's assessment of them because he describes for me how he cleverly worked into his conversations three very obvious tells that he had survived our special training, and they gave no reaction.

All MACOs are highly trained and highly skilled. Demonstrating the potential to become an elite warrior for the Empire is a prerequisite for becoming a MACO. We are the only branch of the Imperial Forces who actually turn away physically healthy and mentally sound recruits for not meeting our minimum entry standards. The Dispossessed have skills, training and instincts that go beyond those of even the top MACO regulars, but we are not all equal. Each of us has particular skills at which we excel beyond any reasonable expectation, and just as we did as children in school, we use those skills to help us find our niches as adults.

I am an expert at surveillance. Beyond merely being a keen observer, I have remarkable instincts about who bears watching and from where to observe them. I can get to within less than a metre of my subject, unnoticed, and remain there, as close as a shadow, for hours. Moreover, at those times when electronic surveillance is necessary or desirable, either to capture a record of events or to collect data when I have to be elsewhere, I have a knack for choosing just the right device and putting it in exactly the perfect place. Sometimes, when what I need is not available among the wide array of monitoring and recording devices offered by the MACO quartermaster corps, I will cannibalize a few different devices to create something of my own unique to the circumstances.

Jignesh, for his part, is hands down, the best interrogator I have ever known, and I say that having been questioned by both General Reed and Alpha prior to being posted to Jupiter Station. I have seen my friend walk away from a ten-minute conversation _in which he never asked a single question,_ with more useful information than I could obtain from a thirty minute interview. Granted, the one time we tested our interrogation skills against one another, it was in an effort to see who could have the most success with a lovely young lady at a dance club in San Francisco who ultimately left the club with one of the female bartenders at the end of the night. True enough, it could be that she instinctively sensed I was only feigning interest while Jignesh was practically salivating over the possibility of mounting her, but that doesn't negate the fact that he knows how to open people up like a jewellery box and extract the information he needs as easily as a highly decorated officer might select which of his many awards he prefers to wear to a semi-formal gathering of the command staff.

With this specific skill of his in mind, I suggest that any information he might relay to me from the field once the _Harbinger_ goes back on patrol which proved useful in keeping Jupiter Station safe would be gratefully received and well rewarded. He acknowledges my offer, but naturally can't set a price right now. He won't know what to ask for until he has something to offer and knows what it's worth. We part with a sense of security which comes from me knowing that he will do all he can to help me keep the station safe and maintain order in and around it, and from him knowing that I will help him improve his lot and advance his career as far as I am capable and his information is valuable.

An hour after Jignesh leaves my office, Lieutenant Zenobia Towneley, Security Chief of the _Erebus_ , contacts me with an invitation to join her for dinner. The relative difference in our ranks makes a simple social invitation unseemly, so it includes a tour of her ship as an excuse to get me to come to her _._ When I inform her that I already have a dinner meeting, but may be able to join her for lunch, assuming Commodore Tucker approves, she readily agrees. It has been some time since I have been off the station, so I contact the commodore immediately and then promptly and with pleasure relay to the _Erebus_ that I will arrive at 11:30 for a tour of the ship with lunch to follow and a private meeting with the Chief of Security after.

The _Erebus_ is a vicious little destroyer of the latest-generation _Shiva_ class. She’s packed to the gills with all the tech and advancements from the _Defiant_ and a few things our own engineers have extrapolated from there. About one-third the size of a cruiser with one-quarter the crew, these tiny ships are fast for their size and more manoeuvrable than their larger sisters. 

Generally intended as escort vessels for the great battle ships, vulnerable hospital ships, cargo vessels and convoys, destroyers are heavily armed fighting machines that, in sufficient numbers, can be as devastating as any battle fleet of larger ships. Once, when I was running security on a convoy taking weapons, equipment, and supplies to a sector that was being harassed by the enemy to such an extent that they couldn't spare any ships to send in for repairs, I witnessed our destroyer escorts taking out three Romulan warbirds.

Initially, the battle was reminiscent of the 1588 defeat of the Spanish Armada by the Royal Navy. The smaller, more agile destroyers would make strafing runs, half a dozen of them at a time, hitting each of the enemy ships in sequence, pelting first one of them and then another faster than her sisters could wallow around to her defence. Once, one of the warbirds made a break for it, but the bulk of the destroyers came round to corral her. Gradually, after much harrying and harassment, they weakened the warbirds' shields and their shots started hitting hulls. A shot from a strafing run hit the reactor of one of the ships, and the resulting explosion sent a huge piece of the hull careening into one of the other ships. The third warbird used the cover of flying debris to flee for a nearby asteroid field.

It was a foolish move on the Romulan commander's part. I can only imagine the intent was to put the asteroids between our ships and the warbird, but the result was something more like a bison, a huge beast of the Great Plains and open prairies, being stalked through the forest by a pack of wolves. The cumbersome size of the warbird made it next to impossible to manoeuvre amongst the floating boulders of the asteroid field, and our many little destroyers were able to snap at it at will. In the end, they had completely en-sphered it, and, in a final unison assault, literally cut it to pieces. It was disturbingly beautiful seeing the wedges of the giant ship drift apart like so many sections of an orange, the bodies and loose debris inside spraying out of it like juice.

I am more than a little surprised to find that the _Erebus_ has a feel very similar to that of Jupiter Station. There is a sense of camaraderie and goodwill among the crew I meet that seems so utterly natural and unforced, that I can't help being all the more suspicious of it. My experiences in the Imperial Service had led me to believe that Jupiter Station was unique in all the Empire, and therefore misunderstood. Finding a ship (any ship, even a little destroyer like the _Erebus_ with a crew and quarters so small they're practically living in each other's hip pockets)that can so accurately reproduce the sense of mutual respect and co-operation we have on the station only raises questions without answers for me.

How have they done this, and why? Have they been spying on us? To what end? Did the friendly mood aboard the _Erebus_ trickle from the captain down, or is it the first evidence of commodore's influence on his engineers working its way through the fleet? If so, how many ships could Commodore Tucker command if he were ever inclined to make such a move? If he did, would that move transfer him from the corps of engineers into the Fleet's command structure? Does he have any intention of seeking a promotion to the admiralty, or might he wish to ascend even higher? If he is planning a move from the station, who would take his place? Anyone familiar with the station would naturally expect Hess or Rostov to get the nod if the commodore is allowed to name his own successor, but there are one or two others in the fleet with the ambition and connections to take that decision out of his hands. What would happen then? 

Jupiter Station is something of a cult. It became what it is because of Commodore Tucker, and it's held together by an unspoken mutual agreement among the huge staff that we all subscribe to the values and behaviours the commodore models for us. While he may not be irreplaceable, no ordinary Imperial grease monkey could possibly hope to maintain the quality and production standards set under Tucker's command. The only hope of coming anywhere close would require promoting from within, and even then, the first person to step into his shoes would likely be doomed to failure simply by virtue of the fact that Commodore Tucker is an impossibly tough act to follow.

I forcibly set my rampant speculation aside as we enter the ship's small mess. I came here with a purpose in mind and I do not intend to leave without the information I am seeking.

Lieutenant Towneley is duly proud of the _Erebus,_ her people, and their record. They have been decorated several times for their decisive contributions in important battles. I am pleased to join her and her alpha shift for a tasty meal of steak and roasted vegetables. The ship's commander, Captain Matthew Brice, happens in, and we are introduced. I don't speculate on whether this is coincidental or planned, but I am asked to relay the captain's good wishes to Commodore Tucker, to assure him that the _Erebus_ will come to Jupiter Station's defence at any time there is a need, and to inform him that the captain has a Superman comic he thinks the commodore would find entertaining, if the commodore wanted to borrow it.

I have no idea what the latter part means, but I assure him I will relay the message in its entirety. The commodore has been in the Fleet more than half his life; I have no doubt he has many connections and personal history with officers throughout the service. Whether the comment is a private joke, intended to be taken in its most literal sense, or code for something far more important, only Commodore Tucker will know.

After lunch, Lieutenant Towneley gives me a tour of the armoury, which is the shining jewel of any warship, and the _Erebus_ is no exception. Though they only recently returned from a long tour with many skirmishes, the armoury is as clean and tidy and squared away as if they were just about to head out. As far as I can see, the only tell-tales that they are here at the end of their tour rather than the beginning are the number of empty spaces in the torpedo racks and the two or three weapons missing from the lockers, and though I'm sure the practised eye of an engineer could see others, these, like the spent weapons, are not something that would fall under the Security Chief's control.

"We're next on the roster for restocking and upgrade, sir," she tells me. "Come through here again in forty-eight hours, and we'll be ship-shape."

"I don't doubt it, Lieutenant," I reply, and follow her into her office.

The blinds are drawn, so she falls immediately into the submissive posture of the Dispossessed, exposing her neck to me. I move forward, standing so close I can feel her body heat, and accept her submission, noting the delicate scent she is wearing as I do. She edges closer, her ample bosom brushing against my chest, clearly an invitation, asking of me something that she will not get. I am sure there are those among the Pack who would have thought nothing of taking this sweet little bitch here and now, but I am not among them.

I move back, and she tilts her head quizzically, like a confused puppy. "I wouldn't mind, sir," she says ingratiatingly, flicking me come hither glances while carefully avoiding any kind of challenging eye-contact.

I smile at her, trying hard to appear more patiently indulgent than amused. "I'm flattered, Lieutenant," I say, "but the female form has never excited me."

Her eyes fly wide open, and her tawny skin takes on a russet undertone as blood rushes to her face in a blush. Then she bows her head and drops her gaze to the floor, darting now anxious, supplicating glances at me as she stammers, "Sir, I – I'm s-sorry, sir, I – I meant no offence."

I debate a moment before deciding how to handle this. She was forward, yes, but as they say, fortune favours the bold, and one thing all Dispossessed share is our boldness; arguably it is that, more than anything else, which makes us who we are, for only the bold would accept the challenge of our specialized training, and only the very boldest manage to survive it. She is in charge of her ship's security just as I lead the security staff on the station. She is as much a commander in her sphere as I am in mine, and yet she acknowledges my place as her superior. I can afford to elevate her a little.

I place two fingers under her chin and lift her head up so that she faces me directly. She keeps flinching her gaze away from mine until I gently command her, "Zenobia, _look_ at me."

She gasps when I speak her name, and nervously allows her gaze to meet and hold mine.

"I _did_ say I was flattered."

Her blush deepens as she smiles and flicks her gaze away again, but I don't chastise her. She's not being insubordinate, she just doesn't want to seem to be taking undue advantage of the small privilege I have extended her. Pack instinct is strong and holding the gaze of a superior for any length of time is a dangerous challenge that she is far too … young … to issue. 

_Far. Too. Young_.

The realization hits me like a blow, and I move stiffly away from her, working hard to conceal my feelings of revulsion and anger toward one who would be so bold and foolish as to _pose_ as one of The Dispossessed.

"Sit down, Lieutenant!" I command briskly. "Behind your desk."

The distance and physical barrier are crucial. I am so angry right now I don't know what I might do if she says or does the wrong thing. Possibly the only thing that saved her from having her throat ripped out the moment I realized she was a pretender is that she faked the body language so well that I was already feeling Pack loyalty and the obligation of the senior member to protect the junior.

"Sir?" She tilts her head like a puppy again, and it's all I can do to keep from unleashing my fury on her. 

_"Now, Lieutenant!"_ I bark, and she practically leaps for the chair.

Silently I berate myself for not having read her file thoroughly before coming here. I should already know the answers to the questions I am about to ask her, the better to catch her in her lie. Catch her and punish her.

"How old are you, Lieutenant?"

"Twenty-eight, sir." Her answer is crisp, confident and respectful. She has no idea what she has done, but her training tells her it doesn't matter. She will find out when I tell her. For the moment, all that matters is she is being interrogated by a senior officer and there is a proper way to behave in such circumstances.

"And you enlisted in the MACOs at what age?"

"My test scores and interview qualified me for direct-entry enlistment into COTS right out of high school, sir. I was seventeen."

I nod thoughtfully. The Cadet Officer Training School is a sister program to the Enlisted Commissioning Program. The ECP is for people like myself, who may not have outstanding scores on paper, but prove themselves _in action_. We are a little – sometimes as much as a decade – older than the COTS recruits, and therefore more experienced and level headed going into training, but COTS takes the top one or two percent of new recruits, those who show early promise, and moulds them into leaders from the start, so that, by the end of their training, they are as capable and confident as any ECP graduate. Most COTS candidates enter the school following their eighteen-week basic training, but about ten percent of that two percent, like Lieutenant Towneley, are DEEs, Direct-Entry Enlistees. They still have to fulfil all the requirements of basic training, but they do that on their quarterly breaks while the rest of their class is getting drunk on some beach or skiing in the mountains. It's a four-year crucible of intensive training designed to burn away weakness or incinerate the candidate who can't take the heat. 

There is still something to be said for experience, but the fact that Towneley completed COTS as a DEE tells me she's as good as anyone in her position can get.

"So, you graduated COTS, most likely at the top of your class…"

"Yes, sir."

I look at her sharply, though she probably didn't realize she was interrupting, and she drops her gaze and apologizes. 

"Sorry, sir."

"What was your first assignment?"

"Homeworld security," she replies. "Exposing and eradicating seditionist groups and radical revolutionary cells. I often worked undercover."

"For the Section?" She'll either know what I'm talking about or she won't and if she doesn't she's dead. 

"Yes, sir," she says. She flicks me a glance, not challenging, just letting me see her eyes so I can know she's telling the truth. "That's when I was recruited for the conditioning."

Section 31 created The Dispossessed. A hybrid of Fleet and MACO special services, they ran the blackest of black ops in Imperial Security and made the BII look like choirboys. The conditioning on 'Wolfplanet Mindfuck', as General Reed once irreverently referred to it, was both their crowning glory and their dirtiest secret. When it worked, it was an unqualified success, and when it failed, there was nothing left to prove their failure. If it had ever been revealed to the general public, it would have been a disaster. People simply would not have tolerated expecting human beings to adapt to life among alien animals, however intelligent the animals might be, or however useful the conditioning would make the humans.

"Who, specifically, recruited you, Lieutenant?"

"General Hayes, I think, sir."

"What do you mean, you think?"

"Well, General Gomez was there, too, and she did the talking, but as General Hayes was there, I think it was ultimately his decision," she explains, and I see her tongue flick out, licking her lips she before she shows her teeth in an ingratiating smile.

"Where was General Reed?"

"I didn't see him, sir."

This is surprising news, but I am well trained in hiding my reactions when necessary.

"Tell me about your conditioning," I demand. "As much as you can remember of it."

Over the years since General Reed told me about what was done to us, I have had rare … not-quite flashbacks … of myself gone wild. It is as if the General provided a key to the lock, but something is blocking the door that separates me from a part of myself on the other side. I can recall the briefest of moments, loping along, half naked through forests and meadows; tumbling playfully with large, furry companions who in any other circumstance would have devoured me; pristine mountains and deep caves that felt like home; and sometimes, when things are hectic as they have been since the explosion, I wake from troubled sleep, remembering nothing of my dreams except the pounding of my heart and the taste of still-warm raw flesh in my mouth, and it is soothing.

"I – I remember all of it, sir," she says.

I growl low then, and stare her down. _This_ is why I wanted the desk between us. Not only does it serve as a protective barrier for her, but it is an object from the world of men, reminding me that I _am_ a man. However strong the urge may be to rip her throat out for lying to me, I'm not some bloody dog to attack her that way.

"Don't _lie_ to me, Lieutenant," I threaten.

Once again she has adopted a crouching posture and a furrowed brow. Flicking apprehensive glances upward at me, she whines softly and whimpers, "No, sir. I'm not lying. They told us how they used to do it, and that suppressing the memories didn't work so well. That's why they put the program on hiatus, so they could revise the reintegration protocols. They found it works better to make us remember everything, so they dispatch automated drones to observe and record us. If we have any resistant memories, they make us watch the footage. It takes longer, but it makes us less likely to dissociate. The conditioning only took about sixteen weeks, but the reintegration takes as long as it takes. For me it was almost eight months."

"You say _we_ and _us._ "

"Yes, sir," she nods. "We each did our conditioning alone, but part of the reintegration program involved group counselling. Otherwise, it was a very individualized process. There were at least a dozen people who came through the program while I was there. A couple left just as I arrived, and one or two came in as I was transitioning. One person came in, completed the program, and left during the time I was there, and another was there before I came and by the time they released me, there was still no indication that he was ready to leave. Some came in after me and I left before them, and a few left at various points during my stay. I … don't think they all returned to service."

Of course not. Some people just don't survive ‘Wolfplanet Mindfuck’, even if their bodies do come back alive.

"All right, then, tell me what happened on the planet."

She licks her lips, swallows hard. Clearly, she doesn't want to do this, but she knows she's dead if she refuses.

"They … the pack, found me on the first day, and let me … or maybe I should say made me … follow them for about two weeks, at a distance of fifty to a hundred meters," she says. "They allowed me to scavenge from their kills, but only after they'd all had their fill and moved off. They seemed to want me with them, or at least to know where I was at all times, because if I fell too far behind or tried gathering fruit and nuts or building a trap, one or two of them would circle around behind me and harass me until I caught up with the pack, almost like they were herding me. I thought I was in good shape, but the first few days, whenever it was clear they had stopped for a rest, I just literally fell over where I was. At times, I needed rest so much more than food that I didn't even bother to eat what they had left me right away, but then, if I had time, I would strip the dried meat from the carcass before they moved off and nibble at it as we travelled, and they allowed it. At first. I think they knew it wasn't enough and would only prolong my starvation rather than prevent it.

"It was autumn when I arrived, and it wasn't long before covering myself with leaves and pine boughs wasn't enough to keep me warm overnight. They wouldn't let me build a fire. They seemed to understand what I was doing when I tried, and they would knock me over and scatter my kindling and stand around snarling and growling at me until I'd gather a mound of leaves and burrow into it.

"I knew it wouldn't be long until I froze to death one night. Then the day came when I was stripping the last bits from an unusually … meaty … carcass they had left me, and I glanced up to find they had all circled round me. There may have been two dozen of them, possibly more, I don't know. By then, I was on the brink, too hungry to think clearly, let alone count, and frankly, I was more interested in the bounty of food they had left me. Maybe they would kill me, maybe they wouldn't, but if I didn't eat, and eat well, soon, I would surely die.

"The dominant male was standing over me, his lips curled back and his tail stiff, and I knew from watching them for days what that meant. They had already eaten their fill and moved away, so he certainly wasn't challenging me for food. Any kind of resistance and I would have been ripped apart, so I did what I had seen the subordinate members of the pack do and fell over on my back with my front paws up by my ears and my hind legs splayed open. If he didn't accept me, I knew I was dead, but then, if I didn't submit, I was dead anyway, wasn't I?"

I notice that she has started speaking of herself as a four-legged animal, but I don't comment. I'm interested to see where her story goes from here.

"He came and … loomed over me for a moment and then … smelled me. All over. It was easier to tilt my head back and give him access to my throat than it was to stop myself from kicking out at him when he … well, when he sniffed between my legs. Then he stood aside and the dominant female did the same."

I see tears well up in her eyes, and they run unchecked down her face, but her tone remains flat as she speaks.

"I … I think they understood that I wasn't … compatible, because when she was finished, the female … took my trousers in her teeth and … she r-ri-ripped them open down there. Then she and the other females and the dominant male wandered off a little distance and left me alone with the subordinate males." 

She doesn't tell me what happened next. She doesn't need to. As outlandish as it may seem, I'm pretty sure I know exactly what the subordinate males did when the alpha and his harem walked away. 

"In most wolf packs, at least on Earth, only the dominant male gets to mate," she says idly. "Did you know that, sir? I didn't know that until I came home and started reading about wolves.

"Maybe I'm anthropomorphizing them too much, but more than once, I thought perhaps the dominant male sort of 'gave' me to the others. There were several in the pack that had the size and strength to beat him in a fight, if they ever thought to challenge him. Maybe they were just waiting until they had the experience to be _sure_ they could do it. I often wondered if he was just using me to appease them and hoping I could help him hold on to his position a little longer. 

"Anyway, that first night, after it was all over, a couple of them curled up against me while I slept. It was the first time since I'd been there that I was actually warm, and for at least a few hours, it seemed like a fair deal, even if it was far from a perfect arrangement for me. I was allowed to travel with the pack from then on instead of having to lag behind, and they permitted me to feed with them, too, after the dominant pair was finished. They always kept me warm at night, though which particular ones lay down with me seemed to change now and then without rhyme or reason. When winter hit, they let me shelter in their cave with them, and when one of the females had puppies, it became my job to look after them when the pack went hunting. 

"For quite a while, I was … communal property … of the subordinate wolves. There were perhaps ten males who would have a go at me whenever they took a notion, until one day, I was eating, and one of them decided it was his turn. For some reason, I growled and jammed an elbow in his ribs. I'd never resisted before, but I just wanted to eat in peace. I don't think I'd have fought him after I had my fill, but he always was impatient. He clamped his jaws on the back of my neck and … he …”

When she pauses, I don't press. I'm sure she knows I'll recognize if she leaves out anything relevant. 

"There was a broken rib lying among the bones of the carcass, sharply pointed at one end where it had been snapped, and my hand closed on it and I _thrust_ it back into him and he _squealed,_ I guess, and fell off me. I was on him _so fast_ , even I wouldn't have believed I could move that quickly. My hand was already covered in his blood. I think if I'd have left him alone he would have bled out from that first wound. But I had to be sure he didn't have a chance. I kept thrusting the sharp end of that rib into him, over and over, in his neck, his soft underbelly, his haunches. I poked out his eyes and rammed it down his throat, and all the while, he was crying like a puppy being roughed up by a frustrated adult.

"Of course the whole pack was agitated, running around, yipping and yelping, like school kids cheering on a fight. Looking back, it's strange that I was aware of that, because at the time, it felt like all I knew was punishing this brute who wouldn't leave me to eat in peace. And then he _screamed_ , it was a human sound, and he just collapsed. So still. I looked down, and I had shoved that rib bone into his belly and up, all the way into his heart. 

"The whole pack fell silent. Maniacal with adrenaline and anger, I hunched over the dead wolf and looked around at the pack, growling as viciously as I could at any of them who met my gaze and brandishing that broken rib whenever one stirred even a step too close. That kill had turned me into an animal. The body was my trophy, and I'd be damned if I'd let any of them get their grubby paws on it.

"Then one of the … senior … subordinates kind of sidled up to me, walking on a curve the way they do to show that they're not trying to be intimidating, and when I lashed out at him, he shifted to avoid being struck and closed his jaws on my wrist, not hard enough to hurt, but just tight enough that I couldn't get loose. When I tried to transfer my … weapon to the other hand, he growled and bit down just a little harder, and I knew he'd crush my arm if I struck out at him. So I dropped the rib, and he began licking my face. I didn't realize until then that I was crying, and slowly, and so very gently, he moved in close to me and nudged me away from the corpse. 

"By then I was howling like a half-grown cub separated from its pack with my face pressed against his side and my hands clutching great fistfuls of his fur. He just sat there, licking a spot on my temple and making soft vocalizations, sort of like grumbles or moans. It was very comforting, and I’m pretty sure there was genuine intent behind it. 

"As I settled down, I became aware of the rest of the pack sniffing the corpse and then coming over to sniff me. There wasn't any kind of threat behind it, they were just … checking things out. Then he … the one who was with me, went over and sniffed the dead wolf, came back to me and licked my face, threw his head back and howled. 

"It started low, and rose in pitch and volume to a high ululating song and then came back down to the lower register. Then he stopped. It was so still I could hear the leaves falling from the trees. He cocked his head and looked at me as if he was trying to ask me a question, then he nudged me in the chest with his muzzle, looked me in the eyes, and gave me a low, soft _woof._ He tossed his head a couple of times, and I imitated him, then I _woofed_ back at him. He threw his head back and started to howl, and I joined him. One by one, the rest of the pack joined in.

"It was such a mournful sound, like we were all grieving for the wolf I'd killed. Though I'd done it in anger, and he had it coming, and I had a right to defend myself and refuse him if I wanted to, it seemed … right, somehow, that I should mourn him, too. I'd taken a life. A _sentient_ life, I believe, and it seemed a terrible thing to have done to one of my own pack mates there in the forest, no matter what the reason. I didn't regret being the one to kill him, but it was a shame we had to lose him, and it felt right to mourn him. 

"Fall quickly turned into winter and the wolf who comforted me … I came to think of him as _my_ wolf … became my almost constant companion. The only time he left my sight was when the pack went on long hunts that kept them away from the cave overnight. He always slept beside me, and only allowed one of the other males, a low-ranking animal with a malformed paw, to join us, sleeping on the other side of me to keep me warm between them. I think he must have noticed that I didn't handle the food they regurgitated for the puppies and me very well, because he started bringing me small game, some kind of rodent that looked like a cross between a hare and a giant squirrel, birds similar to grouse and quail, occasionally he'd bring fish or waterfowl, and I knew they'd been to the lake.

"Winter passed into spring, and one day we all left the cave. I guess we were heading for their summer hunting grounds, but I never saw them because the shuttle came to extract me while we were on our way there."

I don't know how to respond to her tale. As fantastic as it sounds, I believe every word of it. I feel its truth in my blood and my bones. Though I have no conscious memories of my time on the planet among the wolves, I can envision the animals she talks about, the mountains, the trees, the fruit they would not allow her to eat, all of it.

She tells me some more about her debriefing. I don't make her go into detail about all the times they compelled her to watch the video of the subordinate wolves forcing her to accept their advances. Eventually, she gives me the names of a dozen other young MACOs who went through the same regimen. She tells me she was promoted to First Lieutenant after her debriefing and spent a year doing wet-work (mostly assassination ops) for Section 31 before being placed aboard the _Erebus_ as second-in-command of ship's security. She was promoted to security chief when her boss was killed in action by an exploding EPS conduit when a lucky shot hit them right in the plasma cannon and sent a power surge back through the system to the controls. Now, she is just waiting for her promotion to Lieutenant Commander. Because of her early entry into COTS, she has her time-in-grade, but not the years of service necessary for the promotion.

We never discuss my 'payment' for her information. It is enough that she knows I owe her and I know I can rely on her to relay any additional information that will help me defend Jupiter Station as she receives it. I don't say anything, except for the appropriate words of leave-taking as we part, but I think she knows that when she redeems my IOU, I will probably agree to whatever she asks.

As I return to Jupiter Station, however, I’m free to fasten my thoughts on the stunning discovery that there is a new generation of Pack in existence.

When Reed and I spoke, he was absolutely emphatic that the program had been ended. From the lift of his lip baring his teeth and the flicker of maniacal hatred in his eyes, this had been achieved with violence. He did not go into details, though from what happened afterwards the memory aroused him, and I was content to believe him.

Now, I am confronted by the realisation that one of three things is the truth: that he was deliberately lying, that he went back on his word, or that he himself was deceived.

I find it hard to believe that he was lying. Though deceit is one of the commonest weapons used throughout the Empire and none of us would hesitate to use it to achieve our aims against ordinary people, it is not one I would expect Reed to use against one of his own chosen officers. For all that our exchanges could be brutal, they were also invariably honest.

Then again, as happens often in the Empire, he could have made me that promise, fully intending to keep it, and then found it expedient to break it later. I might resent that inconstancy more if it injured me personally, but as things stand, I could hardly blame him for it. I don't doubt that every officer in the Imperial Armed Forces has, at one time or another, had to go back on something they presented to their subordinates as a fact or a promise. Even Commodore Tucker, who scruples more than any man I have ever known to break his word, has had to revoke leave and extend duty shifts from time to time, most recently in the wake of the explosion in Sickbay. So I can easily imagine General Reed changing his position on expanding the Dispossessed if the needs of Imperial Security made it necessary or convenient, and I certainly wouldn't expect him to personally seek out and apologize to everyone who might be discomfited by his change of heart the way Commodore Tucker would.

The final alternative, however, is almost more painful than either of the others. If he was deceived – duped – then he has lost credibility, lost my respect. After all, in the Empire, a man's word is his bond only so long as it is expedient. When the chips are down, no one is surprised by intentional deceit and broken promises, and I am no different; if the general found it necessary to lie to me, I could accept that. Being gullible, on the other hand, is a fatal flaw.

‘In mourning’. He may be in mourning for his lost co-rulers, but if he has indeed been duped and is in ignorance of the thing I have discovered, then he should be in mourning for his lost prestige. If this becomes common knowledge, then his position is in deadly danger.

I _have_ to speak with him. I _must_ see him. I can hardly imagine how I can sleep tonight with the ground of my loyalty quaking beneath me.

Obviously, from what Commodore Tucker has said, General Reed will be incommunicado for some time. Even I dare not intrude on that. 

But as I stride to my office to begin my scheduled meeting with Terry Virts, I resolve that the instant the situation changes, I will demand an accounting.

 _Pack_ law before any other.

* * *

**Chapter Twenty-Two**

**Mislaid – One General**

_Major Austin Burnell_

My visit to the _Erebus_ has unsettled me.

There is a busy schedule of work remaining when I get back to Jupiter Station, and I get on with it at once. I’m confident that no-one would guess that I’m not one hundred percent involved with what I’m doing, and in fairness I’d estimate that only two or three percent of my attention is missing; but those two or three are enough to leave an itching feeling between my shoulder blades that doesn’t subside.

Although I wasn’t interested in taking up Lieutenant Towneley’s offer of her body, the thought of sex has intruded and it occurs to me that it’s been a long time. So when I go off duty I summon Lieutenant Rowley, who’s in charge of security aboard the _Sirius._ This lovely warship arrived a couple of days ago, ostensibly for weapons checks, and as it’s General Reed’s personal ship I’m assuming its real mission here is to transport him off. At a guess, he’s already on board.

While the ‘weapons checks’ are taking place, there would be nothing out of the ordinary in her Head of Security checking in with me. Rowley has already sent a communiqué indicating he’s available for a meeting should I require one, and given the fact that we both already know each other’s past, it also presents us with the opportunity to interact with each other as Pack. As dispersed as the relatively small numbers of Pack members necessarily are, such opportunities are rare and valuable, and we usually take advantage of them.

After offering me the appropriately submissive greeting he’s quick on the uptake about what he’s been called for. What follows is not only physically satisfying but also eases for both of us, however temporarily, the sense of isolation that is the curse of belonging to the Pack but living among ordinary Humans. While providing a pleasurable service to me he is also cementing my acceptance and approval of him, and we reinforce the Pack bond with playful tussling and lip-licking while we mate. He’s not particularly handsome in the conventional sense, but he has a toned, fit, tanned body and clearly enjoys sex; for a while, my world narrows down to the exquisite simplicity of smooth skin, hard muscle and enjoyment. 

Afterwards, able to separate business from pleasure without the necessity to separate skin from sensual reward, we lie together enjoying the smaller, less urgent intimacies while we talk.

“Please give General Reed my regards, if there comes an opportunity for doing so without intruding on his grief,” I murmur, running my hand along the curve of his shoulder and down his bicep and forearm to where his hand is resting lightly on my flank. He really is very attractive, though I’m not usually attracted to men with beards and found the facial hair distracting at first.

His brown eyes flick open, startled. “The general isna’ on board. He hasn’t been with us for over a year, since we left him here last January.” He’s a Scot, but his accent is mild and easy on the ear.

Now it’s my turn to be startled. However he got here in the first place before the explosion happened (I’d finally come to the conclusion that he must have arrived with the other two members of the Triad aboard General Hayes’ flagship the _Fortress_ , and had his own reasons for coming onto the station separately and unannounced), I can’t imagine any reason for Reed to have stayed on Jupiter Station once his ship had arrived, weapons checks or no. He would feel more at home there, where the crew are his own devoted staff. I heard about what happened to the previous captain, who’d been unwise enough to refer to him with less than the appropriate respect at a private function. After that, it can be unequivocally guaranteed that he would be served with the respect of utter terror.

It’s wholly possible, of course, that he’s been on some other ship, elsewhere. Part of his reputation rests on his unpredictability. But he also tends to leave his mark wherever he surfaces, like a tiger spraying trees around its territory. Where a tiger leaves urine, Reed leaves corpses, and even now the shockwave of one of his visits is guaranteed to travel through the area, carrying out its intended purpose of making prospective rebels think again. And now I come to think of it, there have been no reports of ‘deterrent’ strikes on the grapevine of late ... actually, none that I can call to mind since the preceding January. If I’d thought about it at all, I’d just have assumed that the rebels were finally coming to their senses.

Aware that Rowley is now watching me with curiosity, I make no attempt to conceal my puzzled frown. “I’d assumed he would be, that’s all... Commodore Tucker said he was here at the time of the explosion, and then the _Sirius_ arrived, so it was a logical assumption he would have summoned her.”

“Aye. But the fact is that anyone who tries to ‘assume’ what our wee general will be up to next is liable to come a cropper.” There’s pride in his voice, so I know that however informal the description may be it’s intended admiringly, and this is confirmed by his next words. “If he made a habit o’ doin’ what people expect him to, he wouldn’t be half the scary little bastard that he is.”

From a lieutenant this is hardly respectful language, but then it’s perfectly accurate, and I’ve more than an idea that Reed himself would be pleased by the compliment. So I content myself with a mildly censorious look that Rowley takes for what it is – he certainly wouldn’t have used such an expression in any other circumstances – and with a look of comically rueful apology deflects my attention from his momentary lapse by sliding his hand elsewhere. A manoeuvre which I allow him to get away with, because his extraordinarily deft fingers soon give me other things to think about; and soon, with my teeth gripping the angle of his neck almost as hard as my hands are gripping his writhing body, the puzzle of General Reed’s whereabouts for the past year is no longer of foremost importance to either of us.

By the time he finally leaves, with a ramrod-straight salute and the ghost of a wink, I’m thoroughly relaxed and able to devote all my thoughts to what I learned this morning aboard the _Erebus._

That General Reed still commands the loyalty of the original Pack members, I have not the slightest doubt. If he was to appear now, in this room, I would submit to him without a moment’s hesitation. That he is, like all of us, stunned by the loss of his fellow Generals, I have even less doubt. It may well be that there’s much more to his ‘period of mourning’ than appears on the surface, but it’s utterly beyond belief that it does not include sincere shock and grief for their untimely end. I can only be grateful, as Commodore Tucker is grateful, that one of the Triad survived, and that the huge power bloc that is the MACOs is not left to fight and ultimately fracture, with enormous and possibly tragic consequences for the Empire.

(I’d also heard via the grapevine about Reed’s previous penchant for the services of then-Ensign Cutler. I’ll be honest and say that I don’t see what he found so intriguing about her – she’s got a pretty enough face, but her figure’s nothing to write home about and there are many more beautiful women around, to all of whom he had access if he'd wanted it. This minor perplexity is enough to make me wonder if their coincidental presence on the station at the time of the blast and their seemingly miraculous survival is really a coincidence after all, or whether he decided to renew the acquaintance. Presumably whatever room or rooms they were occupying, separately or together, they were at enough of a distance for the blast to do them relatively little damage.)

But now I’ve been made aware that there is a new Pack. And _possibly_ one of whom the general is not aware. It would be unusual for a new recruit not to meet the Arch-Wolves in person, and that means all of them. Certainly Reed indicated when he examined me that he spoke to every one of the Dispossessed officers in person – which made sense, given that he was stepping up to be the head of the Pack. He regarded us as his family. That didn’t mean we were excused the twin duties of obedience and excellence; on the contrary, he expected his authority to be respected and his trust to be rewarded. But one of the foundations of that authority was the personal relationship he had with each of us. We might call him ‘General’ (and woe betide anyone who didn’t), but he knew each of his officers by their first name as well as their last, even if we were never likely to hear him use it.

Nothing in Zenobia Towneley’s account suggests she was deliberately withholding information. She said that she was interviewed by Generals Hayes and Gomez, and I can imagine no earthly reason why she should lie and say that General Reed was not present if he was.

I remind myself sharply not to build too much on that fact, if fact it must be presumed to be. There could have been any number of reasons why the general could not be present on this one occasion. It’s hard to imagine, though, that he wouldn’t have made some occasion afterwards to make up for the omission; it would fit in with his MO to do so – _if_ he knew of her existence...

She was very young, or seemed so to me (perhaps I’m just feeling my age these days). She seemed to hold Generals Gomez and Hayes in great veneration, and I can’t quite get it out of my head that if she’d met Reed at any point afterwards she’d have made mention of it.

 _Did_ he know about her?

And, by extension, about the others?

Because there _were_ others. Towneley named a dozen people that she knows for certain have survived Pack conditioning and returned to service. Those were only the ones she knows. There could be scores more. If the generals had found some way to refine or even perfect the technique, there could be _hundreds._

And if, _if_ , these New Pack were bred to owe allegiance to Hayes or Gomez or both, then Reed’s control over them would be tenuous, if indeed it existed at all. Of course he’s Pack, and of course he’s the Alpha Wolf now, but _they_ don’t know him – not as we know him.

Unease curdling in my stomach, I turn to my computer. Very shortly I’m looking at the details of Zenobia's service record, seeing how her time on the Wolf Planet and the aftermath is noted there. Next, I run a search of the others whose names she gave me and find very similar notations, enough to identify a pattern. Then, I begin checking which of the other MACO security chiefs on various ships in the fleet have similar histories, and frankly I’m appalled by the number of close matches I discover: all young, strong, determined, and fairly new in their posts...

If this is indeed a New Pack, the available evidence suggests they outnumber the old by a significant margin. With the top of their command structure removed, the lower ranks will be all set for a power struggle to break out. It could happen within days, it could happen within hours; some of me is surprised it hasn’t happened already, if the news has leaked out – though news of this importance will be very carefully controlled until appropriate safeguards are in place. I can only hope that Reed’s survival will be enough to keep the potential contenders in check. They know his fearsome reputation, and know that if they break cover too soon and he manages to gain control over both Packs their deaths will be slow and horrible.

Still. I can’t help but reflect how a wolf pack, when it gets too large, or lacks a strong enough leader, will split apart. Factions will arise and begin fighting for breeding rights and territory ... and although I know that I don’t have the power to make a challenge against Reed, _yet_ , it occurs to me that there’s a power vacuum here that needs to be filled. What harm would it do to have a loyal officer take command in his absence? It would provide desperately-needed stability for the Empire, and provide a period of tranquillity for him to complete his ‘mourning’, whatever that may actually consist of. Whether he knows about the New Pack yet or not, far better to have a loyal subordinate take charge in his absence than return to find his task infinitely complicated by the fights that have broken out among junior wolves taking advantage of the temporary opportunity to put in their own bid for power.

Loyal. Loyalty is the backbone of the Pack – until one becomes strong enough to make a grab for power. With what I’ve discovered today, I have the beginnings of the information I need; with time, care and a certain amount of luck, I could step in and become the Alpha for this new pack if General Reed remains sequestered for too long. As long as he believed in my continued allegiance, he wouldn’t feel the need to eliminate me. If and when he discovered his belief misplaced, he wouldn’t blame me; he might well kill me – he’d certainly do his best to – but I know that neither of us would feel the smallest personal resentment towards the other. This freedom from the tiresome and disabling necessity of feeling human guilt or blame over a betrayal is one of the many benefits of Pack mentality.

I apply a heavy security encryption to the relevant portions of the search records and close them. Then I sit back, absently rubbing the angle of my neck. Neck biting is a hallmark of Pack matings and Rowley had borne the evidence of my lust when he left. I remember vividly how Reed had bitten mine, almost deep enough to draw blood – painful afterwards, but darkly thrilling at the time…

I need to shower. After I’m clean, I’ll go to the Mess Hall. Then quite possibly, I’ll remember something I forgot to discuss with our nimble-fingered Lieutenant Rowley. 

Opportunity is a potent aphrodisiac.

* * *

**Chapter Twenty-Three**

**Test Stress**

_General Malcolm Reed_

The day after the bandages are removed from my eyes, I am subjected to an exhaustive and exhausting battery of tests, some of which, I understand, could be avoided if I were in a proper medical facility, but beggars can't be choosers, so I must endure. Perhaps I should say I _submit to_ these tests, for after she explains the purpose of each one, the data they expect to collect, how it will help my recovery, and exactly what it involves, Liz actually _asks_ me to consent to every single one. Naturally I do; I'm in no position to refuse even though I don't see where any of them are strictly necessary, however informative they might be. And I know from very long experience that a prisoner’s best defence is unswerving obedience, so this is exactly what I offer. 

For the time being.

Doctor Salazar is there as well, but he mostly defers to Liz – hoping, I am sure, to capitalize on her 'rapport' with me. Nevertheless, it is very clear to me who is in charge here, because after Liz explains each procedure and solicits my inevitable permission, he jumps into action like a travelling salesman demonstrating his nefarious machines and monitors, probes, wires, gauges, and contacts. He shows me each piece and tells me what it's called and how it's used, as if I'm not capable of remembering what Liz told me only moments before, and maybe I'm not, because more than once, he says something I can't recall Liz mentioning or presents me with a piece of kit I would swear I had never seen before. Anyway, I don't question him because I just want this all over with, and I don't object because I know it will do me no good; and all the while I keep expecting one of them to start a spiel about how with just forty-eight easy monthly payments all this can be mine! But _wait_ ! There's _more_! For every friend I refer in the next two years who makes a subsequent purchase of so many credits, I get a fifty-credit discount on that month's payment!

It's almost laughable how they seem to have deluded themselves that I am actually a willing participant in their experiments. I shouldn't be surprised if they somewhere had a stash of Phlox's paralytic in case I should decide to refuse something at a time when they can't be arsed to cajole or manhandle me into compliance. As for Salazar, I don't think he really cares whether I give consent or not. As far as I’m concerned, he’s no different to Phlox in that he just seems content to have a defenceless test subject to fuck around with. But Liz, at least, should know all too well that in the face of superior power, resistance is futile.

The one thing that does surprise me slightly is that I find I’m referring to her in my thoughts as ‘Liz’. Naturally I always knew this was her name, but somehow she has made the transition from ‘Cutler’ (which is pleasantly formal and easy to distance oneself from) to this ... it’s not even ‘Elizabeth’. 

‘Cutler, Elizabeth’. I can even remember the detail sheet pinging into my staff update folder aboard _Enterprise_. I didn’t think anything much of it then – why should I? Just another body, just another potential threat, just another potential victim. I’d have her and I’d get inside her every way that mattered, and after that she could just make herself useful around the ship, which was presumably what she’d been sent for.

Except that for some reason it wasn’t that simple after all. 

Why?

I have no idea. It wasn’t that she was beautiful, exactly; there were a lot of women around the ship a lot better-looking and with more alluring bodies – all of which were available to a man who could concoct a charge of treason to the Empire against an uncooperative crewperson before you could say ‘swallow’.

I was certainly surprised (and yes, I’ll admit it, aroused) by finding she was a virgin. Aboard an Imperial Fleet starship that’s roughly equivalent to having a unicorn stroll around the corner and say hello. But though it didn’t deflect my dishonourable intentions in the least, it.... 

I’m not good at ‘pity’. I haven’t given it a thought for more years than I care to remember. But for no reason I could name, the bottle of bourbon in my desk suddenly seemed like a good idea. 

‘Stockholm Syndrome’. Of course I’ve heard the term. Now and again I even thought of it, when the broken little bitch dared – _dared!_ – to return the occasional token of acceptance I gave her when I was too sleepy and sated to remember where I was and who I was with. If she felt anything for me except fear and loathing, that was the explanation. What other could there possibly be?

Now the tables have turned, as violently as they usually do in the Empire. She is my master and I am her bitch, and if she thinks I can be fooled into believing anything different, she really is mentally defective.

The first round of tests are merely uncomfortable. It’s bizarre and unsettling to see and feel my muscles quiver and my limbs jerk in response to impulses sent into them from electrodes stuck to my skin. According to Liz, the Nerve Conduction Velocity test (or NCV, for short) reveals a lot about the health of my nerves. Healthy nerves carry stronger impulses to the muscles more quickly than unhealthy nerves. She says my results are marginally slower and weaker than average as one might expect from extended disuse, but not indicative of actual damage, which is what she had feared would result from all the drugs Phlox was pumping into me. So good news on that front.

The second battery of tests are somewhat painful, though not intolerably so. Electromyography measures muscle response to nerve stimulation and evaluates electrical activity within the selected muscles. It requires the insertion of thin needles into my muscles, and they are left there as I am asked to contract and relax each muscle group in turn. It feels a bit like a bee sting and a bit like a cramp, and Liz informs me that she can't offer me even local anaesthesia because it will interfere with the test results. My muscles continue to hurt after the needles are removed, and she advises me that I might be sore for a few days. Apparently I’m slightly stronger than she would have expected, and I’m gratified to think that, futile as it seemed at the time, flexing my muscles to exercise my limbs as much as I could within the limits of my bonds has paid some small dividend.

A few of the tests are humiliating. These, Liz informs me, are somewhat more important than the tests of my skeletal muscles. After nearly a year of unnecessary intravenous nutrition, most of it spent drugged up to the gills to the point that I lost all bowel and bladder control simply because I wasn't aware enough to exercise any, she needs to determine if and how well my internal musculature works. So I choke and gag wretchedly, even with local anaesthetic this time, as a tube is slid up my nose and down my throat so they can monitor and record the action of my oesophagus as I swallow. It's called an endoscopic evaluation of swallowing, and I can't imagine how something so intrusive can give any kind of accurate picture of how my muscles are working when they're fighting so violently to resist and expel the very device with which they are being tested. Somehow, Liz and Doctor Salazar see something that seems to indicate I will be able to learn to eat solid foods and drink again without choking to death, though why they couldn't have determined that from the fact that I have been drinking clear liquids since I regained consciousness is beyond me. The few sips of water, spoonful of yoghurt, and one bite of utterly bland porridge that I manage to swallow all come back up as the tube is withdrawn, some of it even following the tube right out my nose, which brings on a fit of sneezing so violent it causes muscles in my back and round my ribs to cramp and spasm.

Doctor Salazar backs off then, to clear away the equipment and set up for the next test while Liz rubs my back, gives me a cup of water and a kidney basin to rinse and spit the taste of vomit from my mouth, and hands me tissue after tissue to keep blowing my nose until no more porridge comes out.

Fabulous.

And as if that wasn’t enough by way of entertainment, next I am asked to lie on my left side for an anorectal manometry and balloon expulsion test, for which a tube is slipped up my arse and a balloon on the end of it is inflated inside me. I am instructed to squeeze, relax, and bear down repeatedly, and finally to expel the inflated balloon as Liz explains that they are testing to see that I still have the muscle tone and coordination necessary to manage a bowel movement. It would do me more harm than good, she says, to start feeding me again only to induce a bowel blockage. This is the one test so far that I can readily see the point of, but to have one's dignity ripped away so completely when that is all one has left in the world is utterly shattering. Lucifer knows, after all I’ve been through in the last – year? probably more – I should be past caring about my dignity, but I want to retrieve _something_ of myself, some pathetic fragment I can start to build on. If I’m to be expected to carry on (and it seems that I am), I can’t do it like this. I just can’t. I despise what I’ve become and I’ll be damned if I’ll live like it, however convenient my continued existence may be to Commodore Tucker _et al._

When she explains that the urodynamic testing involves placing a balloon inside my bladder and filling it with water until the 'detrusor muscle' involuntarily contracts, and then asks for my consent before starting with it, I can't answer her. My voice simply will not respond. I couldn’t so much as croak like a frog with laryngitis.

"Malcolm?"

I feel my heart rate accelerate and my breath come short and fast. I swallow back the bitter taste of fear and blink a stinging sensation out of my eyes. Am I becoming _weepy_?

Bloody hell! I'm having a panic attack. 

"Malcolm, if you're not willing to consent to this test, just say so." She does it well, I’ll give her that. You could almost think the note of compassion in her voice is genuine.

It can’t be the thought of the pain. She said it wouldn't hurt, except for some mild burning when the catheter went in. I endured that often enough at the beginning to know what to expect, even though I’ve been wearing nappies for the last several months. This is nothing to panic about.

I can't say no. I'm at their mercy. They don't even need to strap me down any more. I haven't the strength to fight them.

My mind shudders, caught between immovable object and irresistible force: the place where the only possible resolution is annihilation.

I'm frozen. The necessity to choose perfectly counterbalances the absolute inability to choose. I can't say yes and I daren't say no and I don't know what to do. Either way feels like the fall from a precipice.

"Malcolm!" Liz says sternly, and she physically turns my head to make me face her. "You're allowed to refuse."

Really? _Can_ I trust her? Much more to the point, _dare_ I trust her? Dare I forget everything I’ve ever learned, dare I be that much of a fool that I believe she’s forgotten or forgiven as much as one solitary moment of the times in my cabin when I was only satisfied when I’d reduced her to wreckage? I look into her eyes, and I can't identify what I see there, but she's been so kind. Maybe…do I dare?

"I don't want this," I finally whimper, and I hate the sound of it, but it's the best I can do. Then I brace for her to push me back down and get on with it regardless. The surrender followed by the sucker punch.

"All right then," she says as she pulls me toward her in an embrace and lets me hide my shame against her shoulder. "We're done for the day, Doctor Salazar."

"But Mr. Reed…"

"It's _General_ Reed," she corrects him most emphatically, "and he said no." 

I can't believe what I’m hearing. She’s fighting my corner. _No one_ has _ever_ done that for me. _No one_ has _ever_ backed me up! The last person who ever even offered knew his was an empty promise because he was simply too insignificant to accomplish anything on my behalf, but at the time, all of six years old, I remember being grateful all the same, and some of that childish gratitude filters down through the years onto Liz. For the briefest of moments I am warmed to my icy, disbelieving core, and then suspicion rears its ugly head and I wonder if this entire confrontation has been choreographed, or considering the likely culprit behind it perhaps I should say _engineered,_ to gain my trust.

But to what end? What possible use could I be to them in my present state? Certainly it would be easier to just force whatever they want upon me now. It's not like I'm physically or mentally capable of resisting. 

_There’s always a catch._ Bitter experience reminds me of that inescapable fact. As of now, I’ll just play along and wait till I find out what it is.

"Look, Liz…"

"He said _no_ , Miguel." Her voice is soft, but no less adamant.

There's a quiet moment, and then I hear the doctor packing up his kit. 

I can’t help it. As hard as I resist, a thread of doubt worms its way somehow into my resolute cynicism. Is it possible that someone, perhaps more than one, actually cares what _I_ want? As impressive as she has been today, I hardly think Liz Cutler has the authority to prevent _any_ one from doing _any_ thing. The fact that she can make Doctor Salazar back down with no more than a few stern words would seem to indicate that someone far more powerful has imbued her with their proxy. As Tucker seems to be the one in charge around here, the possibility is mind-boggling.

"What we _are_ going to do," Liz says against my temple, her tone still soft but insistent, "in a few minutes, is _talk_ about this test, what we expected to learn from it, what we really need to know, and whether there are any suitable alternatives. Okay?"

I nod against her shoulder and sniffle. I didn't actually start to cry, thank god, but my nose is running a bit and maybe she’ll believe me if I blame it on the porridge from earlier. She supplies me with a tissue. I try to suppress the realisation of how low I’ve fallen even to feel the need for tears; right now there’s only so much I can bear, and the knowledge of my own contemptible weakness is something I hardly dare contemplate.

Once Doctor Salazar has packed his equipment away and sat down so his presence is no longer so terrifyingly reminiscent of Phlox’s, and I am feeling more like myself again, we talk. Doctor Salazar explains that the whole purpose of the test is to determine my maximum bladder capacity and whether the ‘detrusor muscle’ will contract before urine backs up into my kidneys. 

My entire contribution to the conversation is, "I don't want to do that." I sound sullen even to myself, but I can’t help it.

Liz explains to me that the detrusor is a smooth (and therefore involuntary) muscle that reacts to stretching. When the bladder gets full it produces an urge to urinate; beyond a certain point, the detrusor, if it is working properly, contracts involuntarily in an attempt to force urination. It’s how infants evacuate before they’re toilet trained and how the body tries to protect the bladder and kidneys from damage due to urine retention. If the detrusor muscle is functioning properly and the urethra is unobstructed, only someone with an uncommonly strong urethral sphincter and incredibly high tolerance to pain would be capable of holding his water long enough to damage the kidneys – most normal, healthy people will just lose control of the urethral sphincter and wet themselves. After the extended period of disuse early in my ordeal (my bladder was constantly emptied by the catheter, so the detrusor muscle never was stretched) followed by the extended period of sedation that left my muscles limp and lax for months on end so that I voided randomly like an infant every time any amount of urine accumulated in my bladder, there’s a chance that my detrusor muscle won't recognize when it’s being stretched and won't contract when and as it should. There’s an equal chance it will be hypersensitive and contract with excessive frequency – leaving me running for the toilet dozens of times a day – or with excessive force and without warning, causing me to piss myself at random, inconvenient moments.

It just goes on getting better and better. Phlox should thank his lucky stars he got blown up in that bloody lab. If I’d got hold of him after hearing all this....!

Speaking to Doctor Salazar, Liz reasons that, after everything that's been done to me in the past year, including the strain of labour and delivery, the muscles that should allow me to hold my water are stretched and weak. I am almost completely incontinent and there is no need to worry about my bladder capacity or the detrusor response right now. Once I develop some bladder control, they can determine if I’m voiding properly by measuring my liquid intake and urinary output. If there seems to be a discrepancy, a simple examination with one of the hand-held medical scanners will show if I’m retaining urine. Only then would urodynamic testing be indicated, and in that case, the balloon would no longer be necessary because I would be able to hold my water myself to some degree.

When Doctor Salazar agrees with her, my realisation brings with it a wave of scalding disappointment that shows me how perilously close I was to being fool enough to actually believe in her – in _them._ In my erstwhile victim and Tucker’s brother-in-law! "So, you just wanted to do that to me for your own amusement?"

"Mr. Reed…"

" _General_ ,” I snarl savagely. If my dignity is all I have left, I will fight tooth and nail to hold onto every scrap of it, and my rank is no small thing.

"G-General Reed, no, it's not like that… Ah just…" It seems that however feeble I may actually be, my glare still has some effectiveness. Salazar stutters and looks aghast.

"From where I sit, it's _exactly_ like that! You _just_ wanted to do an uncomfortable, humiliating and completely unnecessary test! Get out!"

"Please, General, if Ah can expla…"

" _Get out!_ " My aching, all-but-useless muscles contract as if I could do more than sit up and yell at him. Once again I’m confronted by the awful reality that I can’t, and that realisation sends me spiralling up towards hysteria.

"Miguel, just go," Liz says, interposing herself between us. "It's all right. I've got everything under control."

"You're sure?"

" _Get OUT!_ " I shout, my fury escalating with every moment's delay. 

"I'm sure! Go!" Liz insists. As he scrambles through the door, she once again turns my head, physically forcing me to look at her. "He's gone," she tells me. "Get a grip. Come on, breathe with me."

The grip I get is my hands on her forearms, and it’s not until a lot later, when Liz explains to me that I spent much of the past year exercising certain muscles with my fists clenched in rage and frustration, that I discover that the strength of my pain and anger transmits itself though my fingers so hard that even now they leave faint bruises. Still, she manages to get through to me and she’s talking sense, so I lock my gaze with hers and struggle to synchronize my breathing with hers. It takes perhaps ten minutes before I’m calm again, and at that point all I can do is collapse back against the mattress. I feel as if my bones are made of cooked spaghetti.

Liz sits on the edge of the bed stroking my hair back from my face, and I’m so exhausted that I slip into a light doze for a while. When I wake, she’s still there, watching and waiting. I almost feel like she's been protecting me in my sleep, a petite and unlikely guardian angel.

"Hey, sleepyhead," she says with a gentle smile. "What do you want to do now?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, it's not good for you to sleep _all_ the time," she explains. "You won't start physiotherapy for another day or two, but now that you can see again, you should probably do more than just lay around staring at the walls. Miguel wants you to rest your eyes for another week, so you can't read or watch anything much on a vid screen yet, but I could read to you, or we could just talk. I've seen some board games and puzzles around here. They shouldn't be too much strain on your eyes."

I just make some noncommittal noise and shake my head. Board games were never my thing, except occasionally chess, and with the state my brain’s in right now I’m not sure puzzles wouldn’t be the last straw.

"All right," she goes on gamely, "one more day of rest won't do you any harm. I can't leave you entirely alone, though. You're still in withdrawal from some of Phlox's drugs and there's too much risk of you crashing, but if you like, I can sit quietly in the corner and read a book or something, and not bother you."

I bite my lip. That's not what I want. She's done everything I've asked, even when the doctor wanted something else. Dare I ask her?

 _You’ll look a fool – a weakling!_ Almost every instinct in me is screaming in the negative. What the fuck’s got into me anyway, even thinking of asking for favours, for _kindnesses?_ Won’t that be the clearest indicator possible that my spirit’s almost as weakened as my body? Won’t I give away far too much information that’s of use to the enemy who I know is just watching and waiting to pounce?

Nevertheless...

She could have just done the tests regardless. She didn’t have to ask me. She didn’t have to stop Salazar when I said ‘No’.

I swallow. I trusted before–

–And look where _that_ got me.

She puts a hand gently on mine. She doesn’t rush me. Her face is kind.

 _Stockholm Syndrome,_ my inner self sneers.

But I’m not sure that’s what it is. What else it possibly could be I don’t know, but it’s something I can take advantage of, and that’s what matters. Survival rests on taking your chances when they present themselves, and I’m in no position to be choosy, even if I don’t in the least understand what’s behind her attitude to me. Unless it’s all a front, leading me on till I make the mistake of putting any faith in anything...

I resisted trusting her today, and still, she stood up for me.

Astonishingly, I realise that I’m going to take the risk. The magnitude of it is terrifying, because I’m revealing a need, and that’s betraying a weakness - but I _have_ to take care of my body if I’m going to recover all the ground I’ve lost. Cosset it, even, if that’s what it takes in my pathetically weakened state. And if asking for help is necessary, then it makes sense to ask from the one person who - for whatever mysterious and probably nefarious reason - seems most likely to give it to me.

I swallow again; sort of start, and then stop, because in my nervousness I was almost stammering, and rearrange the words again before I get them out in a rush. "Would you lie down with me?" 

Then, of course, I wait, and it feels as if the whole world is holding its breath, not just me. This is where the mask falls off, this is where she scoffs and walks away; as if she’d want to share a bed with _me_ , in any context, ever again!

"Of course, sweetie," she says with a smile. "Skooch over."

“I'm cold," I add a bit pugnaciously by way of explanation, just in case she thinks I need affection - as if! Some of it’s the truth, and some of it is an automatic, angry defence against having given so much of myself away by _asking_ for anything. "Ever since I woke up, I'm always cold…Could you…maybe…"

A look of chagrin crosses her face, as if she should have thought of the heating being insufficient with me being so physically run-down. "We have the room thermostat up as far as it will go, sweetie. But cold air sinks as warm air rises, so there's not much more we can do about the heating. I've already made a request for an electric blanket, but it might take a day or two to locate one. In the meantime, do you want me to spoon with you?" she offers. "You can curl up on your side and I'll lie behind you to keep you warm."

I nod warily. Normally I do not, under _any_ circumstances, turn my unprotected back on anyone in close proximity to me, even in bed. Alpha was the sole exception to that rule, the supreme gauge of how utterly I trusted him; now I wonder desolately if there was ever a single moment when he wasn't seeing my shoulder blades through his crosshairs. Nevertheless, Alpha is dead and I am alive, and this is a world I have to find a way to live in somehow. So I stiffen my resolve, swallow my pride and fear, and mumble, "Yes please."

She seems to know what’s been running through my mind, because she strips off the lab coat she’s been wearing (the pockets of which can contain so many highly unpleasant surprises, as I have cause to know) and demonstrates that the pockets of the light blue tracksuit she’s wearing beneath it are empty. “I won’t hurt you, Malcolm,” she says quietly. “I’m not carrying any concealed weapons and you’re cold. I want to help you get warm, inside and out. I think spooning with someone works on both those fronts.”

Well. I’m not at all sure what she means as regards the ‘inside’ bit, but the ‘outside’ could definitely do with a few extra degrees. The surgical gown I’m wearing isn’t exactly toasty, and the blankets would probably be sufficient if I was in good physical shape, but as I’m anything but, I feel uncomfortably cool most of the time and downright chilly when I wake up.

So we do as she suggests, and although I stiffen instinctively as her body moves up gently against me I can’t deny it, she feels soft and lovely and warm against my back, her upper arm wrapped lightly around my ribcage and the front of her thighs pressed against the back of mine. She explains to me that muscle mass is the body's furnace and once I get my strength back I will be warm again. As much as I look forward to that, I'm quite enjoying this right now. And though it’s not a novelty having her body pressed against mine and my memory functions perfectly as regards other occasions, there’s a quiet and tranquillity about this that lends it uniqueness in my experience with her or any other woman.

There's the faintest thump on the mattress, and then something soft and warm and purring curls up inside the curve of my body. I don't recall when she last left my side, but Beans has been in and out a number of times since we met yesterday; and despite my best efforts to remain stoic, I always gratefully welcome her comforting presence. She has a knack for knowing when she is most needed, and this time, I quickly slide my icy fingers into her long hair and use the heat from her tiny, vibrating body to warm them.

"Malcolm, will you do something for me?" Liz asks.

She’s never really asked me for anything before. Yes, she’s asked me to do things for my own well-being in the past couple of days, but the fact that she’s specified this is for _her_ makes it different. 

Naturally, suspicion stirs like a sleepy snake flickering out its tongue to test the air. She’s softened me up good and proper, is this where the sting comes in? 

The snake doesn’t bite. _Yet._ It rests in its coils, waiting for more information. In the meantime, feeling too languid to actually speak, I hum inquisitively.

Correctly interpreting my noise as an invitation to ask her favour, she says, "Would you give Miguel another chance?"

I groan, not even able to formulate a 'no' at this point. I’m exhausted and I’m humiliated and I’m pissed off with Miguel and his experiments, and I don’t want to even think about him for at least another twenty-four hours.

"He's a smart man and a really good doctor," she says. "And he's really very kind. He's just not used to working in a facility like this. Our equipment is old and out of date. A lot of those tests would have been unnecessary if we'd had an imaging chamber, and it's considered good practice when you're doing invasive tests to do as many as you can while the patient is up for it. The fewer sessions you have to do, the better. The problem is, he's thorough to a fault. It's better to have information you don't need than to not have something you do. The data he was trying to gather might be needed down the road, and you’d done so well up till the last test that it was worth trying to convince you to go through with one more. And to be fair, he only pushed twice after you said no. He wasn't coercing you, he was just trying to encourage you a little."

"Liz," I whimper. At this point all I want to do is sleep. 

"Just think about it," she says. Then she gives me a kiss behind the ear and says, "I'll shut up now."

The last thing I am aware of is her hand gently stroking my breastbone and the warmth of her breath stirring the hair on the back of my neck.

* * *

**Chapter Twenty-Four**

**Serendipity**

_Colonel Austin Burnell_

I stop at the designated door and take a moment to roll the tension from my shoulders and shake it from my hands. Commodore Tucker has summoned me to one of the offices in the secure section of the station. This is not the norm, and I have no idea what it means. Ordinarily, when he needs to speak to me, he is as likely to come to me as he is to call me to his office. Moreover, he has specified a time for this meeting, and emphasized the need for my promptness (while simultaneously apologizing for any insult he might cause in doing so, but still – the fact that he felt the need to address the highly unlikely possibility that I might be late says something in itself). So whatever is about to happen, I suspect it will be momentous.

I press the call button, and the door slides open. 

"Come on in, Major," the commodore greets me. He doesn't offer me a seat, so I don't imagine this is going to be one of our chats over a good glass of whisky. Instead, he steps over to the monitor set in the wall and presses a button. The Imperial Seal flashes briefly on the screen, and then it is filled with the image of a pretty, plump brunette, probably in her mid-forties, in a tastefully decorated office with burgundy walls, mahogany trim and fine art behind her.

"Good to meet you, Major Burnell," she greets me with a charming smile. "My name is Della Bianchi. We'll be getting to know each other later. Please hold for the Empress."

I only barely manage not to blurt _The Empress?!_ as I snap to attention. The commodore follows suit beside me, though a quick sideways glance reveals he is wearing a most unmilitary smirk.

The Empress appears on the screen then, looking elegant as always in a silk gown of mottled gray and brown with black and red accents, the colours evoking the image of a MACO uniform without looking anything like one.

"A pleasure to see you, Commodore, as always," she says, giving him the kind of smile one reserves for an old friend.

"Empress," is his reply, and damn and blast that bastard to hell, but I can hear that bloody smirk in his voice.

"Major Burnell, I'm pleased to meet you," she says, shifting her gaze to me and offering a perfectly charming, if slightly less warm and familiar smile.

I’ve seen her before, of course, even in person, though only from a distance; I’ve been present when she’s attended official functions, but back then I was nowhere near important enough to dream of being presented to her. Now, caught on the hop like this with my throat suddenly feeling like my collar is two sizes too small, I actually have to consciously force myself to relax just enough to speak.

"The pleasure and the honour are entirely mine, Empress," I respond, even as a little voice in my head curses me for sounding like a fucking sycophant.

But her smile deepens, her eyes twinkle at me, and I see something in her of the mischievous little girl she must have been once upon a time. She really is enjoying this moment.

"Let me start by telling you that I realize meetings like this are not always easy for even the most seasoned officers to negotiate," she assures me. "You don't have to worry about impressing me; you've already done that. If you come to think later that you might have said or done something differently, don't worry about it. I have served in Starfleet, I am your Commander in Chief, the standard military courtesy is more than enough."

I silently let out a breath that I only now realize I've been holding and say, with a heartfelt gratitude that I hope she can hear in my voice, "Thank you, Empress."

"I wish I could be there to perform this delightful task in person," she continues, "and I wish there was time to arrange a formal ceremony and invite those friends, colleagues, and family you would want to have present, but you will understand shortly why circumstances simply won't allow it.”

– _‘Delightful task’? ...present for_ what _, exactly?_ But for my Section training I’d probably be goggling at the Empress like a goldfish. As it is, I’ve an uneasy feeling my hopeless bewilderment is still all too apparent to her.

I’m not left to ponder for long.

"Austin Robert Burnell," she addresses me, and if possible, I come even more rigidly to attention at hearing her state my full name. "By my authority as Empress of the Terran Empire and All the Conquered Worlds and as Commander-in-Chief of the United Imperial Forces, I hereby promote you to the rank of Colonel of Military Assault Command Operations."

My brain seems to have come loose from its moorings. Actually it feels like it’s rotating faster than a neutron star, but I have just enough sense left to refrain from pointing out that she seems to have skipped a rank as she glances at Tucker, and says simply, "Commodore?"

With a military bearing I didn’t know he possessed, the commodore completes a series of precise turns and movements to detach my Major's insignia patch from my right shoulder and affix the Colonel's patch in its place. When he steps back, I salute him, and he returns the gesture crisply, then, again with carefully measured movements, he returns to stand beside me.

"As of this moment, you are the highest-ranking field officer in the MACOs," the Empress informs me. "There are three people above you in your chain of command. You answer to Commodore Tucker as commander of your station; to General Reed as commander of the MACOs; and to myself, your Empress and Commander in Chief. Apart from Commodore Tucker, you do not take orders from any officers of the Fleet. You may, by all means, comply with any of their requests you choose, but if you prefer not to, you are free to decline or refer them to the commodore, the general, or myself, as appropriate.”

Her voice sharpens ever so slightly. "This is all detailed in your orders, of course, Colonel, but I wanted to impress it upon you personally. It's not just a formality or a matter of military courtesy. I want to know, in fact, I _need_ to know, if and when anyone in the Fleet attempts to manipulate or coerce you into any actions on their behalf. Is that understood?"

I don’t feel as if I understand anything much at this present moment, but I definitely get what she’s after. "Yes, Empress!"

"Very good, Colonel," she smiles at me proudly. "Commodore Tucker has your orders and he will brief you on your new mission and responsibilities. He should be able to answer any questions you might have, and if he can't, he'll let me know and I will. If the time comes when he refers you to me directly, I don't want you to hesitate to contact Della to request an audience.”

She leans forward slightly across the desk, so that the silk of her dress whispers against its exquisite marquetry surface. I get the overwhelming impression that she is addressing me at an intensely personal level.

"Your world is about to change, Colonel. With that change come responsibilities, authority and a level of access you might not have ever imagined, and the commodore assures me that you are more than up to the challenge. My next order of business after ending this transmission will be to issue a news release and a military bulletin informing the Empire of your promotion and attaching a copy of your CV and service record. Your high school sweetheart and Fleet Admiral Greene will likely learn of your past accomplishments and this latest achievement at the same time.

"When you leave that room, you will be a new man. You're going to very quickly attain a celebrity status. I advise you to direct all requests for interviews, public statements, and speaking engagements to the Imperial Media Relations Office. They know who the reputable organizations are and how to turn down the others with a minimum of fuss. You should also contact them any time you wish to make a public statement. They'll handle the scheduling so you get the desired level of coverage.

"Finally, I suggest you seek Commodore Tucker's counsel regarding any requests for favors or other unusual situations that crop up as a result of your heightened status. It wasn't so long ago that he went through something very similar when we brought back the _Defiant._ "

She seems to be finished speaking for the moment, so I respond deferentially, "Yes, Empress, and I appreciate the wise advice. I can assure you I will follow it closely. I'm honoured to be entrusted with these new responsibilities and look forward to showing you my full capabilities. Thank you for this opportunity."

She nods, accepting the gratitude as her due and reserving judgement on whether I’ll live up to my promises.

"You are most welcome, Colonel, though I must say, I will be curious to see if you are as grateful a year from now as you are today once you realize the burden Commodore Tucker and I have dropped upon your shoulders. Congratulations." Looking at Tucker, she smiles sweetly and nods, "Commodore."

He inclines his head in return. "Empress."

"Sato out." And the screen goes back to the Imperial Seal.

As soon as I'm sure the camera is off, I let as many as possible of my now aching muscles go slack, maintaining just enough tension in my legs and core to keep me on my feet. I never realized that having an audience with the Empress could cause such a physical strain, and the back of my neck is wet with sweat that has nothing to do with the temperature of the room. Beside me, I hear the commodore chuckling, and when I’ve taken a deep breath and returned to my normal posture, I turn to him – or perhaps it would be more accurate to say ‘on him’.

In the circumstances, I think I can demand a little leeway in the respect I’d normally show to a senior officer.

"Bloody hell, Commodore!" I remark, letting the smallest amount of irritation slip into my tone. "You really can be quite a bastard, can't you?"

He laughs gleefully and grins at me. He reminds me of my five-year-old nephew when he waterbombed his older sister at the last family gathering I attended.

"I suppose I could have warned you," he admits, moving over to the desk and taking out of the drawer a pair of tumblers and a bottle of Cardhu eighteen year old single malt Scotch – a very nice whisky I recall mentioning to him during one of our chats back when I first came to the station and we were getting to know one another – "but hell, Austin, where would be the fun in that?"

" _Fun_?" I let myself sound shocked and indignant. I must admit I'm feeling a little giddy, else I probably wouldn't engage in this sort of banter. "For you, maybe. I'm not sure I didn't see my life flash before my eyes!"

Truth be told, while I may have been initially dismayed to find myself face-to-face with the empress and to have her not only know my name but put my face to it, things proceeded far too quickly for me to ever reach the point of imagining my imminent demise, and I'm pretty sure the commodore knows it.

Looking speculatively from the bottle in his hand to me, he says, "Ordinarily, I’d call it conduct unbecomin' of an Imperial officer to be drinkin' on duty, but do you think an excuse could be made for givin' clarity of thinkin' to a newly-promoted colonel who’s just had his first audience with the Empress?"

"I'm not sure it matters, sir," I tell him, straight-faced, and the slight frown I get is all I need to prompt me to elaborate, allowing the grin to break out. "You're still my superior officer, Commodore. If I take your suggestion as an order, it's all your fault."

He laughs again. "Good man, Colonel. Now, I suggest you come have a seat an' we can talk about your new assignment over some of this Scotch I remember you admirin' so much."

He pours us each two fingers of the amber liquid and sits back comfortably in his chair, crossing his legs, right ankle over left knee. I have to admit that while I remember telling the commodore about the Cardhu (my father was rather a connoisseur of fine spirits, and bestowed something of his palate on me), I’m genuinely surprised that he recalls it. That conversation was literally years ago, and the whisky was just something I mentioned as an aside, hardly an important part of the discussion. Moreover, I’m flattered that he would open the bottle to share a drink with me. Whilst it's hardly in the price range of a collectible bottle, Cardhu eighteen-year-old Scotch is one of the more expensive whiskies for general consumption, and at least up till now, out of my usual price range, though it wouldn't be a bad idea as a gift for someone I wanted to impress. Money hasn’t been mentioned, but I’m guessing that leaping two ranks will leave me in a pay bracket where I could drink Cardhu with breakfast, lunch and dinner every day and not notice the dent in the bank balance, though I’d probably notice one in my liver fast enough if I did.

"Before we start talkin' about your job responsibilities," he begins, "I'd like to just warn you about somethin' that has absolutely nothin' to do with your job except that it can make it damned difficult to get things done."

I sip my drink, and it burns its way sweetly down my throat, warming me from the inside out.

"And what is that, sir?"

"Well, I guess you could call it your _celebrity status_ ," he says. 

I can't help scoffing. "I'd hardly consider myself a celebrity, sir."

"Oh, you weren't when you walked in here, but you are now," he replies, with a wry twist to his mouth. "People who wouldn't give you the time of day yesterday are gonna start lookin' for opportunities to be seen shakin' your hand in public. Some guy who let you board a shuttle ahead of him or some waitress who gave you an extra-large slice of pie because you looked so dashin' in your uniform is gonna decide you owe them somethin' an' call to collect. The kid who sat next to you on the bus for five minutes one day in grade school is gonna be calling the tabloids with 'I knew him when' stories, each one more outrageous than the last; an' mean little jealous people who wouldn’t have known you from Adam five minutes ago are gonna start spreadin' rumours an' innuendo about you, filthy little lies meant to shame you an' undermine you."

Of course, he must know what he’s talking about. The realisation chills some of my elation; I have much to learn. "Assuming you're right, sir, and for the record, I'll believe it when I see it, how would you suggest I deal with that?"

" _You_ don't!" he says adamantly, holding my gaze hard. "You've already been assigned a case officer. Given what I know of your record, it's someone with code word clearance or higher – I forget her name, but it's in there." He hands me a PADD which presumably contains my orders and other important information, like how to reach Della if I ever need to have a chat with the Empress. " _She_ will deal with the media bullshit. All _you_ have to do is remember to say her name an' rank, followed by 'at IMRO'."

IMRO, pronounced as one word, like MACO, is the Imperial Media Relations Office. Personally, I find it absurd to think I would ever need a publicist, but, if nothing else, I'm getting a unique insight into part of the Commodore's life that I doubt many people have ever considered. Certainly I hadn’t.

But he’s continuing, so I shelve that thought and pay attention.

"If she doesn't get in touch with you first, you need to contact her _today_ . You can bet your boots she has already memorized your service record in sufficient depth of detail to steer reporters away from any classified ops or embarrassin’ incidents, but it's up to you to brief her on the personal stuff. I don't care if it’s a failed course on your sixth-grade report card or a summer camp romance with some boy who's since been arrested for sedition, your entire life is goin' out there in a big glass display case for public consumption. If there is anything, anything _at all_ , that you don't want out there for the world to know, you need to tell your IMRO girl about it, now."

"Excuse me, sir, but a romance with some _boy?_ " I say carefully. Almost nobody cares about sexual orientation any more, but the norm is still decidedly heterosexual.

He’s taking a sip of the Cardhu, but at the other side of the glass his eyebrows rise. "You honestly think I don't know you're gay?"

This revelation makes me slightly wary. "Honestly, sir, I never would have expected you to think about my sexuality at all."

"Ordinarily, I wouldn't," he shrugs. "But when it comes to my senior officers, my department chiefs – especially when I'm recommendin' one of them to the Empress for a promotion – there's very damned little that doesn't pop up on my sensors. Just because I don't react to it doesn't mean I don't register the information. I've known you were gay since before you arrived on the station, I don't give a shit. As far as I'm concerned, your personal business is none of my business until your problems become my problems. Fair enough?"

"Absolutely. Thank you, sir." I can't help wondering what he knows about my specialised conditioning, but already my mind is working on ways to find out without tipping my hand.

"If there is anything that could be a potential problem, I'd appreciate a heads up about it," he goes on, idly tapping my discarded major’s insignia with one forefinger so that it spins on the desk. "I think you know me well enough to realize that I won't abandon you if you tell me you're in trouble. I'll stand by you an' do what I can to help, _if_ I know what I'm up against.” His eyes come up swiftly, suddenly harder than I’d expected. “On the flip side, if some damned reporter springs somethin' on me an' I've had no warnin' from you about it, I won't hesitate to throw you under the fuckin' bus. I can't protect you unless I know the truth, an' I have too many people countin' on me to risk myself lyin' for you. Got it?"

"Yes, sir. I wouldn't expect otherwise, but I do appreciate your candour." He's laying it on so bloody thick I have to wonder what he thinks he knows, so I give him an opening to tell me. "If you don't mind, I'd like to speak with my IMRO officer before I open up any of the secrets of my past – unless there is something in particular that's come up which you would like me to discuss."

He seems to think carefully about my offer of disclosure. Then, in deliberately measured words, he says, "You are aware that I have a personal history with General Reed, aren't you?"

He wouldn’t believe me if I denied it; it’s common knowledge throughout the Fleet. Most people wondered (me included) how he’d survived Reed’s ascent to power, but it was widely thought the Empress protected him because he was simply too useful to lose. "Mostly through rumours and innuendo, yes, sir."

"An' since he personally hand-picked you for the Head of Security post here, on my station, you probably realize that I assume you have, or had at the time, some kind of close, personal relationship with the general, don't you?"

"Yes, sir. And you’d be correct in that assumption." What point is there in denying it? It’s not the kind of relationship he’s thinking of – Reed and I hadn’t shared a bed for some time by that point – but _Pack_ is about as close and personal as you can get.

Tucker exhales slowly, and fixes me with his gaze again. "I don't care what that relationship was, Austin, but I do need to know: can you give me your word that, if a disagreement arises between myself an' the general, you can put your personal loyalties aside an' act in the best interest of the Empire?"

Honesty is risky, but lying is worse. I decide to trust him with the truth. "I am a patriot, sir, you can take that on faith, but do bear in mind that doesn't necessarily mean I’ll agree with you _or_ the general."

The hard stare he gives me then exposes a ruthless, calculating side of him that one sees so rarely it’s easy to forget he has it. Then he nods, smiles, and the cheerful, friendly man who brightens every room he enters is back.

"That's good enough for now," he says.

A voice in my head curses me for a fool. I've given him a promise, and learned nothing in return; Jignesh would disown me. I feel as if I have just been bested in the first round of a chess match, and I'm not entirely sure my opponent even realizes he was playing. Still, this is _Commodore Tucker_ , and while I have no doubt he is indeed manipulating me on some level, I can't believe he has it in him to intentionally try to damage me merely on account of my past relationship to a man he is known to heartily dislike.

Still cursing myself, I ask, "Will you have time to speak with me again this evening, in case my IMRO officer thinks there are other things you should know?"

"It'll be late, if I do, or early tomorrow," he answers, tapping some keys on the PADD that never seems to be more than a few inches from his hand. "Contact Eloise, I'll send her an e-mail to slot you in after my last appointment this evening or before my first one tomorrow."

"Thank you, sir."

"Now, your assignment. It's simple. You are the new MACO liaison officer. You will be responsible for most of the day-to-day communications with the MACOs, transmittin' orders, reviewin' reports, maybe even the occasional debriefin' after a major operation. Basically any routine personal contact General Reed has with individual MACOs on a daily basis will fall to you for the time bein'."

Well, that doesn't sound very simple at all, I realize. It sounds more like just the tip of a very large and ugly iceberg. And if that’s what the tip sounds like, what’s under the waterline will probably defy description.

"Begging your pardon, sir, but if you don't mind my asking…"

"Stop, right there," he cuts me off. "I'm sure you have a million questions, at least, an' you probably feel like the whole world has just dropped on your head. But if you think you need to apologize an' ask permission before every question, we're gonna be here all day. So just for now, in this room, until you feel like you have a handle on your new job, you have blanket permission to speak freely. Ask what you want, say what you want. I don't care. I just need you to come to terms with what the Empress an' I have dropped in your lap before we leave this room."

Well – he’s given me _carte blanche..._ My gut tightens as I go straight to the most dangerous question I can think of to ask. "Thank you, sir, in that case, I'll start with the most obvious question first. Did the general actually survive the explosion, or have I been made party to a conspiracy to cover up his demise?"

He hesitates just long enough for me to know that I'm not going to get the full truth out of him. The question now becomes, what is he _not_ telling me, and do I need to know it?

"He survived, but he's in no condition to take up his regular duties any time soon."

"He just gave an address to the MACOs yesterday," I point out. "He was clearly shaken by the loss of Generals Hayes and Gomez, but I saw no sign of physical trauma."

"What can I say? The man has incredible grit."

The commodore is clearly lying to me; his flat tone and borderline irony tell me he doesn’t even care that I realize it, but about what, I have no idea.

"When you say he won't be fit for duty 'any time soon' are you talking what, several weeks?"

"Months," is the clipped reply. "At least."

"Where is he now?"

"Someplace safe where he can recover, but I'm not tellin' you."

"But you know where that is?"

"I'm not tellin' you that, either."

"But you've been in contact with him?"

"Yes."

"Are you in charge of the operation?"

"I'm in charge of my part of it."

"It seems to me that you're in charge of a very big part, sir. Perhaps you're the puppet master running the whole bloody show." My heart jerks slightly; this is a big accusation, and there are no witnesses if he happens to have a disruptor pistol tucked in his pocket.

He gives me a level stare, but chooses not to react to my near-accusation. "Assume what you will, Austin. That doesn't make you right, an' I'm not gonna correct you if you’re wrong. It should be enough that I have been given free rein by the Empress to do what I feel necessary to help maintain stability in the Empire until General Reed is back on his feet."

There’s a slight pause, while we watch each other intently and somewhat warily.

"Who else on the station knows about this?"

"I won't give you names, but includin' you an' me, at this moment, five people." That's enough for me to know Hess and Rostov are in it up to their ears, but who would be the fifth person? He's been working closely with Kelby for the past year, but rumour is, Kelby was only brought onto the station to shut him up when he was speaking a little too freely with the press about his history with the Commodore back on _Enterprise_. Or perhaps Rostov, being a romantic at heart, brought his lover, Julie Massaro, into the group. Then again, with the commodore's punishing schedule, he probably doesn't have time to take a piss without checking with his PA, Eloise, so it would make sense to involve her. And what did he mean by ‘at the moment’? Will there be more, or is there someone who isn’t currently on the station but who normally resides here? Possibly…? No, probably Lieutenant Cutler. Her history with Reed makes it almost certain.

"And overall, how many are involved?"

He answers me straight off, which suggests he’s either being honest or has his answer ready. "Sixteen at last count, includin' you, me, an' the Empress, but there may be as many as half a dozen more by the end."

I raise my brows. "That's quite a lot of people to be keeping a secret."

"I know that, but I trust them all with what they know, an' most of them with things far more precious to me than my own life."

Flattered as I am to be included in such a group, I can’t help but wonder at the man's naïveté as well.

"You do realise a case could easily be made that those involved in this operation are conspiring to conceal the general's condition from the public, don't you?"

Unfazed, he takes another sip of Cardhu. "Since it’s sanctioned by the Empress an' with the express purpose of maintainin' stability in the Empire, I think one could just as easily argue that it’s a covert operation to protect the general until he’s ready to take back the reins of power."

"Is it certain he will survive his injuries?"

"No."

"What happens if he doesn't?"

"I guess that depends a lot on the Empress," he says, lifting one shoulder negligently. "If she supports us, we're good. If she throws us under the bus, we all die for treason."

"I have to say, given what I've heard of your history, I'm surprised by your concern for the general."

He laughs rather shortly at that.

"It's not the man I care about, Austin, so much as the stability he represents for the Empire. Right now, there’s no one who can step into the void left by Generals Hayes an' Gomez to command the MACOs the way Reed can. The Empress needs to convince them an' the Fleet Admiralty that he's still in charge. We're hopin' that, with occasional statements from the man himself an' you actin' as his liaison for the daily grind stuff, we'll be able to do that successfully until he actually is ready to return to duty."

That introduces an extremely interesting prospect: General Reed, temporarily incapacitated and in the power of a man who can almost certainly make his life very uncomfortable. If Tucker were other than the essentially decent man he is, I would feel extremely sorry for Reed; and maybe even Tucker may not be able to completely resist the temptation to pay back a few scores while he has the opportunity.

"There are other MACOs, perhaps even someone from the General's own ship, who are closer to him and more experienced than I," I remind him. "So why did I get chosen for this assignment?"

"I'd have to look up the word to be sure, but I think it's called serendipity," he says. "You might not be the most experienced MACO, but you have _enough_ experience, an’ it’s common knowledge that he appointed you in person to a post he’d only give to someone he absolutely trusted. We need someone who can project the voice of Reed's authority to every MACO in the empire an' meet with them in person. Every ship in the fleet comes through here twice a year, if only for a full diagnostic, so, bein' on Jupiter Station, you can do that. You're just the right man in the right place at the right time; an' I trust you, at least enough to believe you'll do the right thing for the Empire, an' the Empress trusts _me_. It's all a happy accident."

‘A happy accident’. That is, in fact, the very definition of serendipity.

* * *

**Chapter Twenty-Five**

**Capitulation**

_General Malcolm Reed_

Today, Liz is hoping to start teaching me not to piss myself. I’ve been aware of her continued kindness in bathing me and dressing me, and I appreciated the fact that I was permitted to wear underpants with my hospital gown because, absurd as it sounds, having boxers on gave me a small sense of dignity. But still I’ve had to wear a damn nappy underneath them as usual, and I’m living for the day when I no longer need to.

There is some question about the cause, or more likely causes, of my incontinence. Liz says the lingering effects of the drugs I was on and the strain of giving birth probably have something to do with it, but the most likely culprit is the weeks I spent catheterized followed by an extended period of being so fucking high all the time that I was blissfully unaware of voiding my bladder and bowels and lying in my own excrement until someone cleaned me up and changed me. The fact that I was given no physiotherapy to retrain the muscles in question didn't help matters, though if I’m perfectly honest, I doubt I would have co-operated if the opportunity had been provided.

There was no way in hell I was going to do anything to make anyone's life easier as part of The Project.

Whatever the case, I once again find it regrettable that Commodore Tucker allowed Phlox to die in the explosion. I would have found it most satisfying to kill him by inches, or perhaps drown him in my own piss, for what he has done to me.

Bladder training, Liz calls the specialized physiotherapy I am to endure, instead of toilet training, which I suppose is meant to be a concession to my adult dignity; but as kind and professional as she might try to be, there is simply no mitigating my abject horror and humiliation. It is difficult enough, having this young woman whom I used so brutally and so often in the past be in charge of this, one of my most intimate bodily functions, which I once learned to control as a toddler without even the benefit of mature cognitive thought; but the actual regimen, once I fully comprehend all that it comprises, seems utterly degrading.

Without any encouragement from me, Liz launches into a detailed explanation of the process.

First, she shows me a probe. It is oblong, cylindrical, and smooth, about the diameter of my index finger and half the length, made of black plastic with shiny silver metal panels around its middle. Wires coming from one end of it plug into a control box with a couple of knobs, half a dozen buttons, and a small display panel about five centimeters wide by ten in length. Liz shows me how the controller can be adjusted to modulate the frequency, duration, and intensity of the impulses the probe sends to my muscles. 

Then she brings out the hand scanner which will be used to monitor the muscle contractions as my body responds to the probe's impulses so that the probe's position and the controller's settings can be adjusted as appropriate. Apparently this bladder training is a rather delicate process requiring a significant degree of precision. Working the wrong muscles, she says, or overworking the correct ones can make matters worse, causing me chronic pelvic pain, an inability to void completely, or both.

Once the probe has exercised my muscles to the point where I have sufficient strength and control to relax and contract them at will, the wires extending from it will be plugged into different ports on the controller, turning it into a biofeedback device and training aid. In this application, the screen can be switched between two different modes. 'Progress mode' will show five lines trailing across the screen which will chart my baseline performance, average, best, current, and goal. Presumably, in this mode, I am to exercise the muscles in question, striving to match my current performance to the goal. In 'Practice Mode', the controller can be programmed with a variety of exercise routines and the display will show a graph representing the frequency, duration, and intensity of contractions I should strive to achieve, sort of like interval training on a treadmill with short, demanding sprints interspersed with long slow periods of jogging.

It will only take me a couple of days to learn to use the controller, she says, then I'll be able to do the exercises on my own. _This_ gets my attention. It has been _so bloody long_ since I have had any autonomy, any choice about anything, that the opportunity to do something _on my own, for myself,_ to improve my condition had seemed a dream I would forever despair of attaining. I try not to show too much, but I’ve gone from wearily indifferent to eager to begin in a matter of moments.

After a few weeks, I should develop enough control to hold my water for an hour or so. At that point, a voiding schedule will be implemented, with the periods between trips to the toilet (or, till I can actually get to the bathroom, using the jug provided) gradually lengthening until I can sleep through the night without wetting the bed. It apparently doesn't matter so much if I wake up once or twice in the night. It's more important that I am aware of when I need to go so I can take care of it before I have an accident. Once I reach the point where I reliably feel the urge in time to get to the bathroom, I can stop using the controller and just work on the voiding schedule. If I follow the regimen, I should be back to normal, at least in this one area of my life, in twelve to sixteen weeks, give or take.

She makes it sound so _easy_ , so guaranteed to be successful that I am almost excited, despite the stab of dismay at how long it will take. The desire to regain some kind of normalcy, some tiny vestige of self-determination, is so strong, that, when she asks if I’m ready to begin, I agree without question.

"All right then, I need you to turn over on your left side, please," she tells me.

I must be slow today, because I just blink at her stupidly and say, "What?"

"I need you to lie on your left side and pull your right knee toward your chest."

"Why?"

I haven’t the faintest idea why it hadn’t occurred to me to wonder where the probe would have to go. Naturally, the fucking thing goes up my arse, because that’s the best route to access my pelvic floor muscles and presumably the most humiliating way it could possibly be put to use. The anticipation that has been building within me collapses, falling deep into a crater in my soul almost as if someone had detonated demolition charges to bring it down. I won't ask her for pity or mercy, no one in the universe owes me that; but honestly, how much more does she think I can endure? 

"It doesn't hurt," she adds reassuringly.

I'm not concerned about the bloody pain! Pain, at least, would give me reason to scream.

My body has been made host to too many foreign objects lately – the alien womb, the monstrous little bastard brat, tubes and wires and sensors and monitors, Commodore Tucker's remote control for my heart, and just yesterday, the wires and needles and tubes and probes attendant with Doctor Salazar's bloody tests. And now she's asking me to let her put one more thing inside me, worse yet, to learn to do it for myself, _to myself._

I suddenly realize that I simply cannot cope with this right now. I curl into a ball, as small as I can make myself, with the blankets wrapped tightly around me and my back pressed firmly against the far bedrail.

"No."

That is my final word on the subject.

Liz talks at me a little while longer. I don't really hear what she says, but I assume she's trying to convince me to do this. I'm too busy watching every movement of her hands. With my heart in my throat and my stomach in knots, I am waiting for her to just lean forward, roll me onto my other side, yank my leg up and have her way with me. After all, it would be neither more nor less than I deserve.

I won't be able to stop her. I can't get away from her. If I had the strength to run, how far would I get before Tucker's device stopped my heart? Not very far at all, I'd imagine.

I wonder, if I died, would she bring me back in range of the transmitter and restart my heart?

But it seems Commodore Tucker's promise to not coerce me into doing anything against my will binds his minions as well, for instead of manhandling me into compliance, Liz just gives a very quiet, resigned little sigh and puts her gadgets away in a drawer.

"It's all right, Malcolm," she says gently. "There's no rush. We'll talk about it again when you're ready."

=/\=

As it turns out, that "no" is my final word on everything for the next several days.

I am compliant and obedient in every way. 

When Liz brings my meals, I open my mouth obediently for each spoonful. My fingers have the strength to hold utensils, but my hands and arms lack the co-ordination to move them from the dish to my mouth without losing more than I consume, so I must be fed like an infant.

When she tasks me with sorting buttons into separate containers and putting simple jigsaw puzzles together, I do my best. I understand that she's trying to help me regain enough co-ordination to feed myself.

When she asks me to lift my arms and legs or to push and pull against her, I obey. She's trying to help me regain my strength.

When she brings a stranger into the room to help her transfer me from the bed to a chair, I don't resist, even though it makes me feel terribly dizzy and nauseous the first couple of times. My body has to learn how to remain vertical again, and for the moment, sitting up in a chair is as much as I can do to strengthen my core.

When she brings me a recorded message from Commodore Tucker, I procrastinate for more than a day, but eventually, when I'm alone, I play it. He was here, in my room. I recognise the shelves behind him as the ones against the wall opposite my bed, and the recognition brings with it various emotions, none of which are particularly pleasant.

He says he's sorry we didn't get to talk, but I was sleeping the whole time he was here and Doctor Salazar's orders were that I should not be disturbed. Then he spews a lot of good ol’ boy platitudes about hope and help and hard work and second chances, and at some point, someone comes in and he interrupts his message to talk with them. By the timecode when he resumes, I know he was here more than four hours that day. 

Four hours, out of a punishing schedule. It ought to mean something, but it gives me a headache trying to work out what. My Dark Side sneers that it’s a sign of how desperate he is to fool me into believing him, but a small voice I try my best to suffocate whispers that maybe, just maybe, he _does_ actually _care_ what happens to me…

Pah. If he does, it’s for a reason! And my welfare doesn’t come into it!

The message ends with him earnestly advising me to trust the people who are caring for me. "They're good people, Malcolm, an' they _want_ you to get better. So do I, an' not just because I need your help, but because _anybody_ who's been through what you have deserves a second chance."

As if he means that! As if he could _possibly_ mean it, after everything I’ve done – after I tried my damnedest to kill him, after I had him tortured for four hours in the Agony Booth!

I'm so incensed by the load of insincere bullshit he's feeding me that I'd like to hurl the PADD across the room and watch it shatter into a hundred pieces, but I haven’t the strength. So I let it fall from my fingers and slide to the floor instead. The clatter as it lands sounds like a crack of bitter laughter.

When Liz comes to check on me, she finds it lying at her feet beside my bed and puts it back on my tray. I wait until she leaves and play it again, furious with myself for my interest in it. This time, however, I drop it back onto the bed and lie back, rubbing my hand across my forehead to ease the tension there.

Liz. Now there’s another puzzle. _Why_ is she still here? _Why_ does she help me, not just with the impersonal care of a paid professional, but with the kindness and gentleness of a friend?

When she changes and bathes me, I do as much as possible to help, washing my genitals when she pulls the privacy curtain around me, and shifting my hips as best I can when she puts the hated nappies on me. I know she is only trying to help me, and as much as I wish I didn't need her help, I want it.

I want my strength back. I want my independence back.

I want my _life_ back.

But however hard she might try to engage me in conversation, I can't bring myself to speak.

I can't even nod or shake my head, so I just do what she asks when I can and do nothing when I can't.

And she never loses patience.

Never gets frustrated or exasperated with me.

Never speaks a harsh word.

And still I cannot _talk._

If I talk, we're going to have to resume our last conversation at some point, and I'm not ready for that. One would think, after everything I have been through, that tiny probe would be nothing, but it's not. It's very much _something_. It's something I'm not prepared to cope with, and I can't for the life of me explain why, even to myself, let alone to Liz.

Every time I think about saying something about anything, my tongue adheres to the roof of my mouth, my chest gets tight, and I find it hard to breathe. But Beans is never far from my side, and when that happens, she licks my palm or rubs against me or curls up on my chest and purrs until I am calm again.

=/\=

In my third day of silence, Doctor Salazar shows up. He checks my eyes and declares they are healing well, reads my chart, has me squeeze his fingers and push and pull against him as he holds on to my arms and legs. Everything, he says, is progressing nicely, except for one thing.

"Why haven't you started bladder training?" he asks Liz.

"He isn't ready," she tells him.

"Isn't…the hell?" He can't even form a coherent sentence, it sounds so bizarre to him.

I know it's absurd, but Liz is absolutely right; and I don't even have the words to tell him that.

"General, you're a grown man wearing a diaper for no good medical reason," he lectures me as if this is something I don't already know. "How can you _not_ be ready to change that?"

He stands looming over me, not at all aware of how intimidating his size is just now, waiting for an answer. I want to respond, but I can't. The capacity of speech has left me. I have no way of communicating to them that this isn't just the sullen silence of Phlox's unwilling lab rat. This is something _wrong._

I am _afraid_. 

The epiphany is so startling that I open my mouth to share it, but the words do not come. Instead understanding washes over me in a sick wave and I curl into a ball on my bed and moan. It has been so long since I have had to just feel my fears and cope with them that I have forgotten how.

It’s not that I’ve forgotten what fear feels like, of course. Anyone who’s as hated as I am lives with it daily to some degree, because fear makes you suspicious and suspicion keeps you alive. But this is _helpless_ fear; I can’t even fight off what threatens me, let alone attack and crush it. The people who are oppressing me so overwhelmingly are acting with only my best interests in mind (I exclude a certain commodore from having that motive, because my survival undoubtedly plays into his nefarious schemes or I’d be a cloud of atoms by now), so how – even if I could envisage any time when such plans would come to fruition – can I console myself by plotting revenge against them? 

It’s utterly impossible for me to articulate any of this. I can hardly wrap my brain around it, let alone put it into words. But Beans leaps up beside me, standing on the mattress with her backside pressed against me, and hisses at the doctor until he backs off. Then she curls up beside me on the mattress and starts licking my hand.

I can hardly admit it even to myself, but her tiny, valiant support makes me feel a little – just a very little – better.

"General," Doctor Salazar says from a few feet away, "Liz and Ah are gonna have a conversation about you like you're not even here. Ah'm not doing it to be rude, but she and Ah need to talk, and Ah think you have a right to know what we're saying about you. If you have anything to contribute, you feel free to jump right in."

I don't even acknowledge him. I am too caught up in the amazement of _being_ afraid.

After Liz tells him how I suddenly clammed up when she explained about the probe, he seems more understanding. 

"Ah suppose, after what he's been through, that could still be a big no-go for him," he concedes. "Did you tell him about any of the alternatives?"

"I did," she says with a nod. "But I don't know if he heard me."

"Well, this can't be allowed to continue for long," he insists. "You're a skilled nurse. Anybody can change diapers and give a bed bath. Your skills are needed elsewhere."

"I disagree," Liz objects, "and I think you'll find Commodore Tucker will, too. Malcolm will tell me when he's ready."

=/\=

It has to be admitted that I hadn’t envisaged Liz Cutler’s services being withdrawn.

Probably that’s just a hangover from the days when nobody took _anything_ away from me without weighing the consequences in extremely delicate scales, and the realization that this is yet another indication of my powerlessness grinds salt into the wounds. Presumably if Commodore bloody Tucker ordered that I was to be made up like a Punch and Judy doll and pushed around the place in a pram, that is exactly what would happen to me, whereas I can’t even control who I want as my caregiver.

I spend a couple of days in a state of seething angst, waiting to see if it’s going to happen, before spending an almost completely sleepless night facing how I’d go on if it did. Because no matter how I toss and turn, I can’t escape the fact that however I feel about it, I have to co-operate with what needs to be done to, with or for me. If I don’t, ultimately the only loser will be me.

Once again, the inescapable facts confront me: I want my strength back. I want my life back. I want my _self_ back.

It’s not that I _like_ Cutler particularly, of course, and given how deep she is in Tucker’s schemes I’m definitely not convinced that I trust her. But when it comes to looking after me, I honestly can’t imagine anyone doing a better job of it. So from a purely selfish point of view (and even I know what a selfish bastard I can be), she’s definitely the devil I know – and if I’m going to recover rather than lie here for the rest of my life flapping about like a landed salmon, then whether I like it or not, Liz Cutler’s help appears to hold out my best chance of getting there.

Dawn comes – or at least a simulation of dawn, since my room has no windows; there’s an illuminated panel high on one wall that slowly begins to glow, presumably reproducing the sunshine arriving outside as it would appear on our own world. I suspect that the light it produces is on the same spectrum as sunlight, helping to offset the miserable sense of incarceration I feel.

Predictably, Liz arrives with breakfast. I want to be glad to see her, and maybe part of me is whether I want to or not, but suddenly the routine is all but unbearable. I know what comes first: I have to be washed and changed, and have _another_ fucking nappy put on.

I endure it without a word to begin with. I don’t know if she picks up on my building frustration, but I get the feeling that she’s finding it more of an effort than usual to cope with what she probably feels to be my sullen silence. 

She hands me the soap gel and washing cloth. I’ve pissed myself and I stink and I’m fed up to the back teeth of it all. Maybe Alpha and Em were the lucky ones; at least they got to die with their dignity intact.

But then again, I'd already lost that by the time I tripped that switch to release the coolant and kicked the panel that I believed would obliterate us all, hadn't I?

I don’t even know I’m going to speak when the lock just bursts open. I hurl the washing cloth into the bowl, not giving a toss that it slops water all over the bed, and hiss, "Please, just _go!_ Leave me alone! I need some time to myself."

She looks at me with those large, clear eyes. She doesn’t even bother pointing out that I’ve been alone all night and that after she’s done I’ll be alone for most of the morning, so it wouldn’t kill me to be civil for the few minutes while she restores me to some kind of respectability and makes sure I’m fed and watered.

"All right, Malcolm, I'll go," she says gently, and I hear beeping. "I'm setting the timer for twenty-five minutes. I'll be back in thirty."

I’m used to the sound of that timer. It makes its presence known quite frequently during the hours when I fight like a demon to bring some strength back into muscles that are currently about as firm as well-used dishcloths.

The door closes softly behind her.

For a bloke who’s always prided himself on being a brutal realist, it’s taken me long enough to face the cold fact that I’m utterly and completely out of options. I lie on the bed staring into the hard truth that if I want to have a future then I have to hand myself into the control of people who really do know – and for some unknown reason even seem to care – what’s best for me.

My own personal tormentor materialises promptly when the thirty minutes are up, and I suddenly understand and appreciate her strategy in setting the timer for twenty-five minutes. I didn't quite break down in the time she left me alone with my thoughts, but it was a near thing. I was feeling just shattered when the timer went off, and the five minutes of grace she allowed me gave me time to correct my dishevelled appearance, rein myself in and get my shields in place; I hadn't realized until just now how bloody sick and tired I am of being _emotionally_ weak and vulnerable, too. When she enters the room, all cool and professional, I’m propped up in bed, as despondently inanimate as a discarded puppet, and with a huge inward sigh I mentally hand over the strings into her hands. "I'm ready now."

Liz, being Liz, knows exactly what I’m talking about, and I miserably succumb to the bladder training.


	6. 26-30

**Chapter Twenty-Six**

**Politics**

_Commodore Charles Tucker III_

Every now and again, I have to go back to Earth on Fleet business.

Today’s visit’s going to be even less of a pleasure than usual, because the Admiralty is apparently questioning Jupiter Station's capacity and security since the explosion. 

I’ll go to hell and be damned before I’ll let anyone take the Station away from me. My power lies in its productivity and the loyalty of the people I have there, every bit of it hard-earned and precious. I can guess easily enough that there are those with their eyes on my position there (aren’t there always?), but I take what comfort I can from the fact that as far as I know, I have the backing of the one person whose opinion really counts.

She sits at the head of the conference table, looking demure in figured amber Triaxian silk. She doesn’t say much, but after I’ve given my account of what’s happened to date she listens attentively to what each of the four admirals present has to say. The secretary at her elbow takes notes and occasionally leans forward to whisper in her ear.

"I for one would be more comfortable if there had been a BII investigation," Admiral Gardener says stubbornly. 

Well, that's one thing I can't have. 

"Respectfully, sir, are you questionin' my loyalty, or my engineerin' abilities an' those of my people?" 

Normally I wouldn't challenge an admiral this way, but Gardner is clearly the least respected of all the people around the table. Both Greene and Hernandez tend to roll their eyes when he speaks, and Leonard seems more interested in his manicure than any point Gardener is trying to make. It doesn't hurt that the Empress has already read and approved the reports.

Not receiving any indication from Hoshi that I’ve overstepped the mark, I continue, pressing my point hard. "You see, it was myself, my head of security, then-Major Austin Burnell, who was, incidentally, appointed by General Reed himself an' has since been promoted to Colonel an' SiC of the MACOs, an' my Chief of Maintenance an' Repair, Terry Virts, who traced the explosion to the _non-standard_ -issue cooling unit that Generals Hayes an' Gomez approved an' had installed without station assistance or oversight for Doctor Phlox's project.

"It sounds, sir, like you're suggestin' either that we're not smart enough to find the real cause, so we made somethin' up, or that we know the real cause is somethin' that reflects poorly on us, an' so we're lyin' about it. I can't imagine you think you'd find a BII team with enough engineerin' know-how in general an' enough specific knowledge of Jupiter Station to conduct a more thorough investigation than we did. So, I'd like to know which it is, sir, so I can defend myself an' my people against an honest accusation an' be done with it instead of fightin' gossip an' innuendo every time I turn around from now 'til the sun goes nova! 

“I ask you again, sir, are you callin' us traitors or idiots?"

"I'm not making _any_ accusations, Commodore!" Gardener tells me, trying with his tone to put me back in my place, but he only succeeds in setting off another round of eye rolling and cuticle inspection. "I'm just suggesting that it might have been worthwhile to have trained investigators do the investigating."

"Beggin' your pardon, sir, but what exactly do you think an engineer _does_ when somethin' quits workin'?" I ask, using a politely perplexed tone that makes it sound as if I can't believe he's said something so stupid.

That gets a snort of amusement from Hernandez (although she manages to stifle it in a fake-sounding cough), and Leonard is now smirking at his fingernails. Even the Empress shoots me a wink. As senior comm. officer aboard _Enterprise_ , she had to troubleshoot her own station from time to time, so she knows what I'm talking about.

Gardener has clearly managed to get promoted beyond his ability to perform; he’s a walking illustration of the old Peter Principle that states ‘In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence’. Anybody with any brains could have told him what he needed to do to shut me up was come back at me with something like, _Maybe you're both! It's damned convenient, isn't it, that the only people to survive the explosion were your old nemesis from_ Enterprise _and his favorite fuck toy? And why is it, exactly, that only you and your people got to see the wreckage? The project may have been top secret, but from everything I've heard, all that was left of it was scorched and twisted metal, so there's hardly any worry about clearance to prevent a transparent investigation._

Ironically, had he said something like that, in the kind of world I'd like to see, _I'd_ be sounding like a nut job and _he'd_ be the reasonable one. Luckily for me at this present moment, it’s not that kind of world and he hasn’t the brains to pour piss out of a boot with the instructions written on the heel – or the imagination to wonder how the boot might get filled with piss in the first place!

At any rate, it’s the Empress herself who now comes to my defense, her eyes sparking with annoyance.

"Admiral Gardener!" she snaps, and everyone sits up straighter. "I have personally read and approved the reports of Commodore Tucker and his Chiefs of Security and Maintenance," she continues ominously. "I can assure they are all most thorough and complete. I also ordered a search of purchasing records which found the invoice for the refrigeration unit at fault for the explosion."

I don't know if she really ordered that search or not, but if she did, I'm damned lucky we stayed so close to the truth.

I see Gardner swallow as she sweeps onward. "If you _insist_ , I can have that information forwarded to your chief engineer along with the three reports. He can compare the specifications for the cooling unit to the system requirements for components being installed on Jupiter Station and come for himself to the same conclusion that it was only a matter of time until the coolant leaked and the gas, being highly volatile, exploded."

If the Empress is bluffing, I need to get a whole lot better at poker. If she's telling the truth, I need to be a lot more careful in what I'm doing. I never would have expected her to do more than rubber-stamp our reports with her approval.

"Thank you, Empress, that won't be necessary." Gardener wisely backs down. I’m guessing we won’t be hearing a whole lot more from him on the subject of a BII Investigation anytime soon.

"May I offer a suggestion that might put everybody's mind at ease?" Hernandez offers.

Glancing at the Empress, Black gets a nod.

"What are you thinking, Erika?" he asks.

"The _Revenge_ is due for a refit next quarter. Why don't we move that up, and I can visit the station, do a thorough inspection, verify whether Jupiter Station has the capacity to handle salvage, refits, and new construction, and report back on whether I think Commodore Tucker's claims and requests for additional personnel are reasonable?"

She’s perfectly right, of course. Her ship’s seen some hard service and if the truth were told, the refit’s well overdue. 

But I’m not going to jump at the offer as if I’ve something to hide. I take a moment to consider what our current workload is and how we could rearrange things to fit this change to the schedule.

“Yeah, Admiral, I guess we can deal with that. The sooner we have that ship of yours back up to full battle order, the better. She’s a beauty.” I don’t have to pretend enthusiasm – _Revenge_ really is a lovely ship, sleek and deadly. 

I glance around the table and then deferentially at Hoshi, who will naturally have the final decision. “Are you happy with that, Empress? I’m sure all of us here trust Admiral Hernandez to render a fair account of what she finds.”

Even Gardner – as much of an asshole as he is – can’t really argue with that point; Hernandez is as sharp as a needle, but whatever her feelings towards any of us around the table, she’s a loyal servant of the Empire who would do nothing to jeopardize its defense capabilities. As one by one the others nod acquiescence, he glumly adds his.

“Excellent. I’ll consider the arrangements made.” The Empress smiles graciously. “And since you’re here, Commodore, and we don’t see each other often enough, I’m sure you’ll be kind enough to join me for a meal this evening.”

I incline my head until my forehead nearly touches the table, the appropriate obeisance when one is seated and unable to bow, and for just that moment I reflect on how far I've come from that rednecked farm boy from Panama City. There probably aren't a hundred people in the empire privileged to sit in the Imperial Presence, let alone dine with her. 

“The honor will be all mine, Empress.”

The honest truth is that I’d counted on going back to the station as soon as the meeting was done – presuming, of course, I’d survived it still in control. But even though I’d a darn sight rather be getting home than spending an evening ‘poodle-faking’ (I can’t remember for a moment where I heard the expression, but then remember with a grin that it’s one of Malcolm’s), the sight of Gardner looking like a bulldog that swallowed half a dozen wasps at the same time is nearly enough to make up for everything.

* * *

**Chapter Twenty-Seven**

**Ghosts**

_Commander Richard Kelby_

Two weeks have gone by already.

Two whole damned weeks, and it hardly seems like I’ve shut my eyes.

Three, since the explosion, and so much has happened in that time it feels like my whole world has been turned upside-down and inside out.

I had my doubts (I’ll be honest) about taking on the job of rebuilding Sickbay, but since meeting Jeremy Lucas I’ve discovered a whole new exciting world that I can really get involved with. We’re still just drawing up the plans, and I’m loving the feeling of listening to his ideas and finding ways to bring them into being – even, sometimes, to improve on them. It gives me a thrill like a big kid to see his eyes light up when we get some completely new concept springing into being between us.

As soon as the _Livingston_ arrived, my team and I swarmed all over it like a colony of ants, inspecting and inventorying every last component and piece of equipment. Since the ship's scheduled to be decommissioned anyway, we're going to appropriate a lot of her purely mechanical components like IV stands, surgical carts, and storage cabinets and some of her more current technology, like an imaging chamber that's less than a year old and a full set of next-generation hand-held medical scanners. Of course, we can't start ripping her apart right away. She has to serve as our Sickbay until the new facility is up and running, which means that every component we remove from the _Livingston_ will have to be installed and operational the same day on Jupiter Station. Since she came to me from Salvage and not only knows their protocols but re-wrote most of them to improve efficiency while she was working for Mike Rostov, I put Julie Massaro, who ended up becoming my SiC after all, in charge of documenting and scheduling all the equipment transfers.

Jeremy and I, with Julie helping us find ways to streamline and economize where it wouldn't impede patient care, even managed to convince Commodore Tucker to expand Sickbay by 50%. After all, it was working at capacity before the explosion and if we're going to add a new crew to the station for refits and maybe another for renovation, plus additional people in existing departments to meet the higher demands the new staff will place on the quartermaster, the mess hall, sanitation, repair and maintenance, and station security, Sickbay will need more space. Then Jeremy made a suggestion that put the commodore right over the moon. If we could provide six or eight fully-appointed research suites, he said, set around a common hub equipped with a refrigeration unit, imaging equipment, possibly a surgery suite and a few other big-ticket items, we could safeguard against another accident like the one that created the need for all this reconstruction _and_ run the medical research labs more efficiently by having them share some of the major energy-suckers common to medical research. Of course, the commodore didn’t just take our word for it – we had to present him with the figures and make good, reasoned arguments, and somehow, a teaching program and a name change got folded into the mix – but once convinced, he forwarded the business case to the financial people and got it rubber-stamped, and within days we got the green light to go ahead.

Meanwhile, Colonel Burnell - in what has turned out to be his last act as head of station security before taking over his new post as second in command of the MACOs - supervised the team that documented every square inch of the damaged interior, as is usually done whenever a potential act of sabotage takes place, because for all the Empress has decided a BII investigation is not needed, she could change her mind, or the next person in charge, who could take over sometime this afternoon or decades from now, might be of a different opinion. I have to admit that for all he seems a completely pleasant guy, Burnell scares me a bit (maybe it’s the accent – reminds me too much of General Reed), so I'm more than happy to see Janis Crawley take his place. From what I hear, though, Burnell is making his new offices here on the station, so we'll probably still see him around even if we don’t deal with him face-to-face quite as much anymore.

Once the MACOs had documented everything in situ, Rostov, Virts, and Fincke had teams working round the clock to clear out everything that needed to be removed. Working under MACO oversight, now directed by the newly promoted Major Crawley, in case some previously overlooked piece of material evidence turned up, they decided between them what could be salvaged, what could be repaired, and what had to be recycled. Then, last night, Fincke's Gamma shift hosed it all down, scrubbed it clean, and dried it off; and Virts's people installed temporary hanging work lights at different levels so we can see what we're doing until we get some ceilings and permanent light fixtures installed.

So here I am, standing at last in what remains of the old place. Right now there's only the one section of grav plating inside the threshold - big for one, comfortable for two and just room enough for three to crowd onto. It's only there for people to do a final check of their gear before floating off into the vast echoing space, three decks up and three more down, that used to be Sickbay and the surrounding areas. The new medical facility, being designated a critical system, is my sole responsibility; Terry Virts and his team (and anyone that can be shanghaied into helping them) will be responsible for the surrounding labs and offices. Deck plating and bulkheads will be our first priorities, and for that part of the project, Terry has agreed to defer to me. It's hard to believe that a little over a year ago, I was just another asshole working in the scrapyard at Utopia Planitia. 

Repairs have been carried out to make the superstructure sound, but once I get my team working, some of it’s going to have to be ripped out again and reconfigured to make room for the extra wards and operating theatres Jeremy and I have planned. I can see it in my mind’s eye, not just the physical structures, but the life that will go on here – Liz Cutler treating a burn; Jeremy rolling some young recruit into the imaging chamber because he forgot the old adage to lift with his legs instead of his back and herniated a couple of discs. The sexual health clinic, counselling services, and psychiatry will be tucked into some corner along with the office where annual physicals are administered to protect people's privacy; once you enter the door to that suite of offices, nobody will know where you're going or why you're there – but right now there’s nothing but an empty space, bare wires and the ends of conduits poking out here and there, and parts of it still showing the scorch marks from the blast.

Personally, I can’t wait to get started, even if our first two weeks will be spent doing nothing but testing and replacing circuits and plumbing. I remember Phlox from my days back on _Enterprise_ , and from the day I found out he was stationed here, I have suspected that the tank Commodore Tucker had me build when I arrived was used to house some hapless victim of his demented hobbies. Even though the section that held the tank was pretty well obliterated, and you’d be hard pressed to tell now even where it was, it still gives me the shudders when I think about it and what poor creature lived, suffered, and more than likely died in it. At least with Commodore Tucker and Doctor Lucas in charge, we can pretty well guarantee that there won’t be any more horrors like _that_ perpetrated in here. 

I’m not particularly superstitious, but I don’t really like being alone in here – I prefer it when there are other people around, and the sound of voices – but I asked Crawley to let me in for just a few minutes, so I could get one last look at what I'm starting with before we begin. Innocent people died in that explosion as well as the guilty; I knew a few of the technical staff, though not well. I’m guessing not many, if any, had much say in whatever projects they were working on (one doesn't – or didn't – say no to the Triad), though maybe that’s wishful thinking. With the possible exceptions of Liz Cutler and Jeremy Lucas, you don’t find a lot of bleeding hearts among the medical staff who’ve served in the Imperial Fleet for long; it hardens them. Either that or they end up blowing their brains out. Then again, Liz and Jeremy are caregivers, directly responsible for treating patients. Most of the people who worked and died here were lab rats – technicians, researchers, and the like, far more interested in data than patients.

Then I remember the first time I saw Jeremy, so engrossed in his data that he didn't realize he was on camera with a room full of engineers smirking at him. 

People aren't as one-dimensional as I'd like them to be. Those lab rats had feelings, too, people they cared about, people who cared about them. Some of them were my friends. Maybe one or two of them even had families depending on them. Hell, Phlox had three wives before he was declared a slave of the Empire for being an alien. I suspect he still thought of them and their children as his family, regardless of who they officially belonged to at the end. Maybe, being a privileged slave in service to the Triad, he was even granted conjugal or family visits. It's just a whole lot easier to think about a couple of cartoon villains, their mad scientist, and his minions being vaporized in an explosion than it is to imagine them as flesh and blood people, with good and bad qualities just like me, human or otherwise.

Haunted? I wouldn’t go that far. Till we can get the work teams in, though, I suppose there’s some … some lingering feeling of horror here. 

But I have some things that are more powerful than any bell, book and candle: I have some bold plans and some fine engineers that will help me make Doctor Lucas’s big dreams a reality. And once that happens, the good work that’s going to be done in here will be more than enough to dispel any memories of the nightmares that once ruled the place.

“You can hang around here for one more night,” I say aloud, defiantly, almost before I know I’m going to say anything. “But first thing tomorrow, we’re taking this place back!”

* * *

**Chapter Twenty-Eight**

**Encouragement**

_Commodore Charles Tucker III_

There's something really beautiful about a hospital ship, all gleaming white and quiet and clean. If you don't think too hard about who you'll find in the wards and how they got there, it can even be soothing. Ordinarily the crew quarters, their corridors on the _Livingston_ done in shades of a color I think is called mauve, where the staff retires to rest between shifts, are even more peaceful than the medical sections of the ship; however, as I am approaching the CMOs quarters with a welcome gift under my arm and a guilty conscience, every step only serves to heighten my anxiety. The _Livingston_ has been docked here for more than a week already, and though I met Jeremy Lucas at the airlock when they arrived and have seen him every day at the morning meeting, I haven't had – or more accurately haven't _made_ – time to visit him in his quarters yet.

As a matter of fact, I've been dodging him.

Something about Jeremy reminds me of my dad. He's not that much older than me, maybe ten years or so, but he has this sort of wisdom about him. Add to that the almost paternal compassion he has for everyone around him, and well, it's hard _not_ to look up to the guy. The last thing I want to do is disappoint him.

And that compassion of his is complicating things for me now, too. When a guy can find a way to understand and forgive almost anything, it's hard to justify lying to him or keeping secrets from him. I discovered that the first time he wanted to give T'Pol a physical. 

I'd just taken over command of the station about the time Jeremy was transferred in, and some of the former commander's old guard had been giving me a rough time; so T'Pol had seen a few rougher-than-usual nights in quick succession, and there were marks, bruises, mostly, and rug burn on her shoulder blades, and probably some tearing and irritation because I hadn't exactly been generous with the lube. I realized instantly that Jeremy wouldn't approve, so I tried to get him to postpone the checkup. If I could hold him off for a week or so and control my temper during that time, she'd heal up and he'd be none the wiser. 

Naturally, the more I resisted, the more he insisted, until we were shouting at each other.

_"I am your CMO, now, Commander!" he reminded me. "When it comes to the well-being of station personnel, you don't get to say no."_

_"She's a slave!" I insisted. "That makes her property, not personnel."_

_"She is a person residing on this station," he growled. "That makes her medical care my responsibility, and she is overdue for a physical. At the very least, I need to make sure she isn't carrying any transmissible diseases that she could pass on to you. Now, you can send her to my office or I can see her in your quarters, but she's getting a checkup. Today."_

_It was clear enough that his next argument would be that it was necessary for **my** health, and I knew I was beat._

_"Fine!" I snarled. "You have a medical override code. Use it. Let yourself into my quarters an' do it at your leisure. I have more important things to attend to."_

_I stormed off, so mad I didn't know what I was going to do next. Eventually, I ended up in Anna's quarters (I hadn't promoted her to Chief of Construction yet, so she didn't have an office) sipping coffee laced with good – not top-shelf, she wouldn't waste top-shelf spirits on coffee – Irish_ _whiskey._

_"You did nothing illegal," she told me. "The worst he can do to you is tut and fuss and patch her up. She's a slave. She has no more rights than one of those goofy superhero paperweights you keep on your desk. If you want to throw one of them against a bulkhead in a fit of anger, nobody's going to stop you."_

_My paperweights are antiques, most of them gifts from people who care about me. I'd never risk damaging them. I must have dipped my head even lower in shame then, because Anna changed tack._

_"You admire him, don't you?"_

_I rolled my eyes to look up at her. "Don't you?"_

_She shrugged and smiled slightly. "He seems like a really decent guy," she said. "Makes it kind of hard not to." Then she sat on the bunk beside me, close enough our shoulders were touching, and leaned in. "I think you're worried about what he thinks of you, ask him for advice."_

_"Advice? On what?"_

_"Doesn't matter. Controlling your temper, managing the assholes who seem to be going out of their way to make your job more difficult." My head whipped around so I could look at her on that one. I hadn't said one word about the shit the department heads had been giving me. Anna smirked and added, "Hiding your anxiety about disappointing someone you look up to."_

_I smiled back at her then. Even in the early days, she knew me well._

_And I knew her._

_"You haven't told me what you think, yet, about me havin' a Vulcan sex slave," I observed. "It's not like you to keep your opinions to yourself."_

_"Well, the problem is, I'm of two minds on the matter, Boss," she said. "As a woman who worked side by side with T'Pol on **Enterprise**_ _day in and day out, I have one opinion. As a Human who probably would have died had her little rebellion succeeded, I have a completely different position. Then again, she was a gift from the Empress, so you couldn't exactly have turned her down if you had wanted to. And she's a slave, after all, so by law, you can do whatever you want with her. And I realize that's more than two opinions on the subject. Since I haven’t figured out a way to reconcile those conflicting points of view yet, I just keep my mouth shut. It's not that I don't know **what** to think, it's that I have too **many** thoughts about it. _

_"But regarding our CMO, I can say with some confidence that it doesn't matter what you ask him about, he'll just be flattered that you ask."_

_"Doctor Lucas to Commander Tucker," the comm. sounded, and Anna gave me a smirk. "May I see you in your quarters please?"_

_I rolled my eyes, Anna threw me a wink, and I headed out._

**_Damn it, I'm the CO of this station!_ ** _I told myself as I trudged through the corridor. **She's my property and they're my quarters. He can't intimidate me!** As much as I tried to convince myself that I was in charge and I was in the right, I still felt like an errant schoolboy being called into the principal's office._

_When I got there, I looked around my quarters. "Where is she?" I demanded angrily. "I said you could come here and examine her, not take her away."_

_"I sent her to Sickbay with one of my orderlies. The contusions on her wrists and thighs are healing well, but the abrasions on her back seem to be aggravated. I thought some dermal regeneration therapy was in order to reduce the risk of infection. I also prescribed injections for a number of micronutrient deficiencies."_

_"She gets three squares a day, just like I do!" I growled. There had been no judgment in his tone, but I felt defensive anyway. It was bad enough he'd seen how I'd knocked her around. I enjoyed rough sex, and that didn't embarrass me, but there'd been a few times in the last week or so that it had been more of a beating than an energetic fuck. I wasn't having him think I starved her, too. She only went hungry until I was sure she understood her new place in the world, and even then, she got a handful of fresh dog kibble every other day until she ate it. A couple of weeks after that, I let her out of the cage and started feeding her proper food again._

_"Oh, her calorie intake is perfectly adequate," he said mildly, gesturing me toward my armchair. Only then did I realize I'd been waiting for permission to sit, and in my own damned quarters, no less. I_ _practically threw myself into the seat and scowled at him. "But Vulcans require a higher percentage of complex carbohydrates in the diet to help them metabolize the vitamins and minerals they consume._

_"Now, that can be corrected in one of two ways. You can have Chef swap more whole grains and root vegetables for the leafy greens and white starches in her meals, or I can give her monthly injections."_

_"I suppose improvin' her diet would be the best way to handle it," I said grudgingly._

_"Oh, absolutely," he approved enthusiastically as he settled into my desk chair and turned to face me and I realized I had been maneuvered into a position where I was **literally** forced to look up to him, but I couldn't imagine this portly, kindly little man deliberately manipulating me into anything and concluded it had to be what they called 'bedside manner'. "Any time a medical condition can be handled with diet or behavior modification that is always the best choice. No medical treatment is entirely without side effects._

_"Now, regarding those bruises and abrasions…"_

_"She's my property, Doctor," I got defensive all over again. "If I want to shove her out an airlock to see how long she can hold her breath, I'm within my rights."_

_His face became wooden, and as I got to know him better, I realized that was a sign that he was fighting with everything he had to contain his anger._

_"I don't dispute that, Commander," he sounded amiable enough despite the rigid expression. "But I don't think you'd ever want to do that._

_"I spoke with T'Pol about the history the two of you share," he said. "She thinks she's lucky to be alive."_

_"She is."_

_He nodded. "Probably," he agreed. "I_ _think you have enough of a temper to kill someone in the heat of anger, especially if she put you, your station, or people you cared about at risk; but she hasn't been in a position to do that for a long, long time, and you don't strike me as the kind of fellow who holds on to a grudge that long."_

_"Maybe you don't know me that well."_

_"Or maybe something else is bothering you, and you don't know what to do about it, so you come home and kick the dog."_

_I'm pretty sure I squirmed in my seat when he tapped T'Pol's cage with the toe of his shoe._

_"Taking command of a new post is a huge stressor for anybody, and you're a young man to be given a responsibility as big as Jupiter Station. After what you did with the **Defiant** specs, people are going to expect great things from you. As far as I'm concerned, Commander, we are now talking about your mental health. Anything you say to me is covered under doctor-patient confidentiality."_

_"So, it's just between you, me, and the security recordings, huh?" he knew as well as I did that nothing was ever truly private in the Imperial Fleet._

_"As a physician, I have the authority to block such transmissions if I feel the lack of privacy compromises my patient's care," he said. "I'm obliged to record our conversation and to disclose immediately any treasonous or seditious activity or intentions you admit, and Imperial Security can subpoena my records in connection with any investigation in which you are a witness or a subject. Short of those two exceptions, I can keep what we say here and now private._

_"What do you say?"_

_It may have been stupid at the time, but I nodded. I hardly knew the man, but I trusted him. He pressed a button on his PADD, there was a shrill whistle, and then the word SECURE glowed green on the display._

_Over the next half hour or so, I unloaded all my worries and anxieties on him. My fear of failure, my frustration with the department heads who showed me all the required military courtesies but smirked in my face as they agreed to do what I asked even when we both knew they wouldn't and then would come back to me with some lame excuse for why they didn't, my fear of someone coming up behind me in the dark and creating a new opening for CO of Jupiter Station, my worries for my family now that I was a celebrity (at the time the underground was kidnapping for ransom the close relatives of Imperial big shots), even my shame and anxiety about how he would judge me for taking all my other frustrations out on T'Pol._

_He listened intently, never judging, only interrupting occasionally with a specific question or encouragement to continue. Eventually, I ran out of things to say._

_"Thanks, Doc. You know, gettin' all of that off my chest really does make me feel better."_

_"Oh, Commander, we're not finished yet," he told me._

_"But, I don't have anything more to say," I insisted, leaning forward to get up out of my seat._

_"You've said plenty for me to make a diagnosis," he said. "Now, I need you to answer a few questions before_ _I give you my prescription."_

_"Oh, no! I didn't agree to have my head shrunk."_

_He gave me a long-suffering look and said patiently, "It's not going to be like that at all, Trip, I promise." I didn't recall giving him permission to call me by my first name, but now that he'd gone and done it, it didn't feel right to correct him. "No deep, probing questions about your feelings, nothing about your mother, and I don't care what else Herr Freud thinks a cigar might be, if you give me one, I'm going to light it up and smoke it. I just need a few facts so I can advise you properly."_

_Throwing my hands in the air, I flopped back in the chair and said, "All right, ask away!"_

_"The department heads really piss you off when they fail to follow orders, don't they?"_

_"I thought you said you wouldn't ask about my feelin's!"_

_"I said no deep, probing questions," he corrected me. "This only requires a yes or no answer. They piss you off, don't they?"_

_"Yes."_

_"And is it fair to say you feel disrespected by them?"_

_"Yes."_

_"And is their insubordination the main reason you're worried about failing in this new job?"_

_"I suppose so."_

_"Do you think you deserve their respect?"_

_"What?" That felt like a probing question._

_"All I want is a yes or no answer, Trip. You don't have to defend, justify, or even examine it, just gut reaction, when you weigh your experience, skills, and accomplishments against a bunch of second bananas who have spent decades in the security of Jupiter Station, some of whom have never left the solar system, let alone seen combat, do you think you deserve their respect?"_

_"Hell, yes."_

_"Good, that's the right place to start. Now you need to convince them, and the only way to do that is to get to know them and let them get to know you. How are your self-defense skills?"_

_"Huh?"_

_"Hand-to-hand combat. Can you handle yourself?"_

_"Doc, I’ve spent **twelve years** servin' on active duty battle ships, more than half that time on **Enterprise**. Out there, when the enemy isn't out to get you, there's a good chance at least one of your crewmates is. The fact that I'm still breathin' should be proof enough that I can do more than just handle myself."_

_"Perfect. Then I recommend you quit sparring with these jerks in the conference room and start doing it in the gym."_

_"Wait a minute! You're a doctor, an' you're suggestin' I beat them up? I might be young for the job, but I'm not seventeen anymore an' you sure as hell don't need me to help ensure your job security!"_

_"You don't have to beat them up, just convince them that you can," he said. "Then give them two weeks to fall in line or request a transfer. If they toe the mark, fine. If they request a transfer, send them where they want to go. If they fail to do either, arrange an involuntary transfer to the front or bury them in a toxic waste disposal facility, and fill their position with whomever you want."_

_"Bury them?" I echoed. "Literally or figuratively?"_

_He shrugged. "That's up to you."_

_I shook my head and scoffed in surprise. "That's nice talk comin' from a doctor."_

_"Son, I don't approve of hurting anybody for any reason, but I'm a smart man. I know how the world works. I also know, probably better than you do, how, or at least why, T'Pol got those marks on her back and wrists and thighs. The way things are going around here, someone is going to get hurt. I'd rather it be them than you or her."_

_"But those guys have been runnin' this place for years," I argued._

_"And you have ideas for how to make it run better?"_

_"Yeah."_

_"Are you confident your ideas will work?"_

_"Yeah, if they'd do what I ask."_

_"Then they don't really know what they're doing, and you don't have to **ask** anybody to do anything around here. You're the boss. You **tell** them, and if they don't do it, you get rid of them."_

_"But this is Jupiter Station! The amount of stuff that goes on here…"_

_"You were chief engineer on a starship for half your career, weren't you?"_

_"More or less, why?"_

_"And within your engineering staff, you had several departments, didn't you?"_

_"Yeah."_

_"What were they?"_

_"Well, we had the crew that manned the main reactor an' the sub-light engines, another that co-ordinated with tactical to make sure the weapons had sufficient power without compromisin' life support an' structural integrity, a fabrication lab, a repair workshop, some people assigned to ship repair an' maintenance, an' a sanitation team."_

_"So, you were actually juggling more on a starship than you are now," he observed._

_"Well, I wouldn't say that, exactly," I argued weakly._

_"No, I wouldn't either," he admitted, "but my point is, you already know how to do this job. You can manage people and delegate responsibilities. You're just letting the scale of it intimidate you, and, feeling intimidated, you feel like you need to hang on to the guys with experience, even if they're not very good._

_"I guarantee you, son, get rid of the dead weight at the top, and everyone else around here will breathe easier because you do."_

Within a week, I had written a program that would let him edit and splice conversations on that special psychiatric pad of his, even correcting the time code to make the editing undetectable, so that he could further protect any of his patients he thought might have revealed something that would get them in hot water if Imperial Security or the BII forced him to turn over his recordings. It was another week or two before I decided I trusted him enough to give it to him – conspiring to get around any of the Imperial security measures is a serious offense, and as likeable as he was from the start, I needed to find out just how strictly he followed regulations before I let him see how willing I was to overlook or outright break some of them. 

I took Jeremy's advice about the department heads, of course, and he was right. Morris Fincke was the only one of the four chiefs who survived the cull, but he'd only been here a few months before I took over, so he wasn't as resistant to change as the others. The other three all received involuntary transfers to the front because they didn't believe me when I told them they could pick their next assignment if they did it in two weeks or less. In the months that followed, I transferred more than ten percent, nearly five hundred people, of the subordinate staff who couldn't get with the program. Those who just couldn't seem to understand and follow orders to my satisfaction got forty-eight hours to choose a new post from a list of openings. Those who treated their colleagues badly (including taking sexual liberties with unwilling partners, when it came to my attention), created an unsafe work environment through laziness or a blatant disregard for safety protocols, or consistently failed to complete their jobs with no good reason, were snatched out of their places by MACOs and packed off to the shittiest holes I could find for them as soon as I had a reasonably qualified replacement lined up. 

Of course, after a house-cleaning like that, it took about six months for people to quit pissing themselves (in one case, literally) every time I walked into a room. At least once a week, one of the women, or young men, or older men who knew they didn't have the stamina to meet the demands of battleship service anymore would break down in tears if I spent too long talking to them on one of my tours of the station. Jeremy even asked me to attend face-to-face counselling with one little ensign who was so afraid of me she was having nightmares. Out of necessity, I started carrying extra handkerchiefs and became very good at comforting people.

_"Are you doin' your best?" I'd hand them a handkerchief._

_A sniffle and a whimper, "Yes, sir."_

_"An' your last performance review reflects that your supervisor knows that?"  
_

_Another whimper, "Yes, sir."_

_"Do you have any plans to attack anybody just to see them hurt in the foreseeable future?"_

_Another sniffle and a frown and a very puzzled, "No, sir."_

_"An' are you plannin' to start randomly fallin' asleep on the job or ditchin' your safety gear?"_

_An 'is this for real' look, and another puzzled, "No, sir."_

_"Then you're fine. I don't expect anybody to be perfect; I'm sure as hell not. Nobody who gives me their best is goin' anywhere against their will, so…" I offer an encouraging smile. "… get a grip an' get back to work, ok?"_

_A tentative smile._

_I grin back._

_A bigger smile. "Yes, sir!"_

So here I am today, about to have breakfast with the man to whom I owe almost everything, the man who could understand and forgive just about anything, and already I have made up my mind to lie to his face and keep secrets from him. 

I press the button that activates the chime telling him he has a visitor.

I could tell myself that I'm doing it to protect him. The less he knows about what's going on, the safer he is from interrogation, but that lie's a bigger whopper than any of the ones I'm planning to tell him. He doesn't have to know anything about anything for the MACOs or the BII to decide they need to interview him, and it wouldn't necessarily have to be about anything I'm doing, either. With all the confidential conversations he's blocked from Imperial Security over the years, and I'm sure he's the kind of man who used that privilege fairly liberally, he's probably more likely than anyone I've ever met to be subjected to an impromptu interrogation. Nothing in the Empire is ever completely over and behind you until your dead, either, so he could get dragged in as a material witness to something that happened while he was in medical school and I was still … Well, not in diapers, he's only about ten years older than me. I'd have been riding the short bus up to the high school for advanced math classes. Knowing about my mess with General Chaos will only put him at greater risk if the wrong someone finds out about it. He's far, far more likely to be questioned about things he has seen or done in his past than anything I'm up to now.

I could say I'm deceiving him to protect myself and all the other people I've dragged into this harebrained scheme. The less he knows, the less chance that he'll let something slip to the wrong person and get us all in trouble, but that's as big a load of bullshit as the other lie. The daft professorial façade he wears covers a keen mind and a quick wit and the kind of loyalty that would see him sooner cut out his own tongue than divulge anything said to him in confidence, professional or otherwise. Nobody keeps a secret like Jeremy Lucas. You tell him something private, and it's like he forgets it immediately, until you need to talk it over with him again.

I press the button again, maybe he was in the shower? I hear him holler from the other side. It sounds like he's saying, 'Just a minute,' so I wait.

The fact is, I just don't want to disappoint him. 

I've already disappointed Liz by making her stick that control device in Malcolm's chest. Malcolm might just be disappointed to have survived, though I think he's still making up his mind about that. Amanda Cole is probably disappointed that Liz and all her 'complications' are still a part of this operation. Miguel is disappointed that the baby didn't make it, though he hides it well; and the only way he'll ever get over what I did with his miniature pacemaker is if he finds out _why_ the baby didn't make it and I'm not sure I'd be man enough to stick around to see that. Mama and Daddy were both disappointed by how I handled Liz's tantrum, each of them for different reasons. Hess and Rostov are disappointed that I took their trust for granted. Hell, even T'Pol’s probably disappointed that I didn't let Malcolm die along with everybody else in the explosion, and while I don't think she wants to see Liz dead, I'm sure she'd be a lot happier if the two of us weren't working so closely anymore.

And we're all going to be _real_ disappointed if I can't turn Malcolm and have to … neutralize him, not to mention how disappointed – and dead – we're going to be if, worse than failing, it all goes wrong.

I'm just tired of disappointing people, so I'm going to do my best to avoid disappointing Jeremy. If that means lying to him and keeping things from him, that's what I'll do.

"Trip, my boy!" he bellows cheerfully as the door slides open and he greets me, still in his pajamas and a silk robe. He makes no apology for his appearance and I expect none. I suggested this breakfast meeting, and he agreed so long as I didn't mind coming to his quarters. The time on the _Sherman's March_ was nearly eight hours behind station time and the _Livingston_ was almost four hours behind us. Two weeks is hardly long enough to adjust after almost two years serving in what amounts to a different time zone, so six o'clock in the morning probably feels like two a.m. to him. 

And forget the salute, when I take his offered hand to shake, he uses it to pull me into a bear hug strong enough to pop my back, which actually feels kind of good as it releases some of the tension I've been carrying. A beefy little man with a giant personality, Jeremy doesn't do anything halfway. There is nothing lukewarm about him. You're either engulfed in the warmth of his friendship and sunny disposition or completely frozen out. It makes me glad to be his friend.

"It's so good to see you! Come in! Come in!"

I follow him into his quarters, and open my gift box to show him what I have brought. Four perfect orbs, golden in color with just a blush of red, like a Florida sunset. 

"From the Tucker family farm?" he asks, his eyes lighting up in delight. He could be a child getting a box full of chocolates.

"The sweetest ruby red grapefruit you're ever gonna find, picked fresh this mornin', an' still warm from the sun," I tell him. "We get whatever the quartermaster sends us for the galley, of course, but when things are in season, my daddy ships me a crate full of whatever's best once a week. Growin' up in a citrus orchard, I've just been spoiled for anything that gets picked early, ripened in storage an' shipped weeks later."

He gestures me into a chair as he rummages in a drawer for a knife and a couple of spoons.

"I trust you'll join me," he says, and I nod, taking the knife when he hands it over. As I slice one of the grapefruits in half, he pours us each some coffee. Eggs, sausage, and toast have been held at the moment of perfection in a stasis unit made to look like a silver tray with a domed cover.

"I'm so pleased to see you and so happy we finally get a chance to talk," Jeremy tells me as he scoops out a section of his grapefruit. "I have to admit I was a little disappointed that you couldn't visit sooner."

That's it, I fucking surrender. I've heard that you can't please all of the people all of the time, but it looks like I can't please anybody altogether. 

What the hell. Into each life, a little rain must fall, and lately, it seems it's my fate to be the cloud.

I slouch back in my chair and groan in frustration.

Jeremy gives me questioning a look. "Everything all right?"

I give a sour look back. "No." 

He doesn't say a word, just goes on buttering his toast, and I know he won't speak again until he has more information.

"Jeremy, I'm sorry," I tell him. "I wasn't gonna do this to you right away, but, I … I need a professional consultation."

He looks up sharply then. "A professional consultation?"

I nod. "These last couple weeks, since the explosion, it's been rough. We lost a lot of people. I … need to talk." I try to give him a meaningful look that says it's about more than my personal worries and concerns, but he'll figure that out soon enough.

He holds up one finger to stop me, rises, and bustles away from the table. When he returns, he has one of his psychiatric PADDs with the transmission blocker and the recording feature. He says some formal mumbo-jumbo at the beginning, date, time, patient's name, and then he presses the button to block security transmission. There's a shrill electronic whistle, and he gestures me to begin.

Apart from some of the names, Malcolm's location, and how I got him there, I tell Jeremy _everything,_ from the changes in sickbay staffing and practices that started the moment Phlox took over, which I looked the other way on, to the day I kicked Malcolm in the ribs when he was lying helpless on my shuttlebay floor, to the elevator ride, to his horrible screaming after the second time, to my changing relationship with T'Pol, to Kelby building the tank, to the bracelet I made for Liz, to setting up the explosion, the device in Malcolm's chest, my conversations with the Empress, involving my family, my speech to the MACOs, what happened to the baby, lying about it to Miguel, promoting Burnell, my meeting with Malcolm, and everything in between. 

I talk for an hour and a half. Jeremy listens intently, saying almost nothing except to occasionally clarify the timeline or the people present at a particular moment, or to encourage me to eat some more of my breakfast. I finally wrap it up by showing him a chip I want to install in his PADD that will let him communicate with Liz in the event of a medical emergency that she can't handle on her own in the bunker.

"Well, you're in it right up to your eyeballs, aren't you, son?" he says with a chuckle.

"Feels more like I'm in over my head," I respond. "Is that all you got for me?"

He laughs outright now. "What do you want from me, Trip?"

"Hell, I don't know. Maybe I need you to tell me I should have let him blow himself up along with the other two an' Phlox," I say. "Maybe I want you to tell me I was a bastard for kickin' him when he was down an' a cruel son of a bitch for tauntin' him when they took him off to be raped. Maybe you should just stick me in a straitjacket an' ship me off to the nuthouse."

"Well, you're not going to get any of that from me. You were in no position to defy orders, so you did what you were told, and since shoddy work is not in your nature, you did it well. As for the little 'extras', well, from the tales you have told me, you have every reason to want a pound of flesh. It's not the noblest sentiment in the world, but it's perfectly human and completely normal under the circumstances. You know me well enough that I think you can guess what my opinion of slavery might be, so I'm sure you know how pleased I am by what you've decided to do for T'Pol. Even if it isn't freedom, it's the best you can do. As for the rest of it, I'm really proud of you."

"Proud?"

"Yes."

"Really?"

"Why wouldn't I be? The easiest thing in the world for you to do would have been to follow orders, have no doubts, let things continue as they were going, and let the chips fall where they may. Instead, you chose to show mercy, to a man you had good reason to let suffer, and when you got the slightest hint that he could be more than the monster he was, you went beyond mercy and chose hope."

"Until he gave me that warnin' I was only hopin' to have the pleasure of killin' him myself."

"And yet you abandoned that motive for a far nobler one at the first opportunity. You've done the best you can in a situation where there are no good choices. Face it, son, you might be Human, with Human faults and failings, but that doesn't make you a bad guy."

"So, I'm a great guy who killed a lot of innocent people to save a rotten bastard because I need his power on my side," I respond bitterly. "Good for me."

"How long do you think they would have lived after Hayes got what he wanted?" Jeremy demands sharply. "I'm sure he knew when The Project began that Humanity wouldn’t stand for being ruled by a Human-alien hybrid. He probably had plans from the start to eliminate anyone who knew about it, and those plans would have included you, Phlox, Liz, possibly Michael and Anna if he knew they were there when Reed arrived, and most certainly Reed himself. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if, far from collaborating with General Gomez, he was using her just as much as he was using Reed and planned to get rid of her in the end as well."

For a moment, I'm dumbstruck. What the hell kind of world are we living in that a sweet little, almost innocent man like Jeremy could piece that all together?

"Shit, Doc, I never really thought beyond the fact that not even Reed deserved what they were doin' to him an' that at least, I would end it quickly," I tell him. "Here you've played it out all the way to Alpha's endgame in less than five minutes." 

"You'd have got there eventually," he says encouragingly.

"'Bout the time they marched me in front of the firin' squad, maybe."

He chuckles. "Maybe a little sooner than that."

I disagree. "No, I know I'm in over my head, now." 

"Well, that's ok," he says. "Because you have me, and Mike, Anna, Liz, and whoever else has agreed to help holding you up."

"You _do_ realize that means y'all are underwater an' drownin', don't you?"

The look he gives me then is so filled with compassion, it feels almost like a hug.

"Trip, son…Charles," for some reason, his using my given name makes what he's about to say more important than anything he's ever told me. "I don't think you could cope with knowing just how many people would be not only willing, but happy, to do exactly, _literally,_ that for you."

I'm really flattered by his words, but if I'm honest, I'm just a little annoyed by them, too.

"Well, fuck it all, Jeremy! You're not gonna let me off the hook, are you?"

He chuckles warmly, then.

"Son, you hooked yourself," he says. "If you want to be cut loose, you'll have to justify that to yourself as well."

I finally surrender to my fate. Wherever this business with Reed is going, I'm in it to the bitter end. Jeremy gives me his PADD and I install the special comm. chip, reminding him as I do that he needs to get to a private, secure place before replying to any messages Liz sends. 

"An' if you ever get the chance to talk to the civilian doc, he doesn't know the baby was euthanized," I say. "Can you do me a favor an' take care not to tell him?"

Jeremy gives me a scowl. He doesn't like being dishonest, and he knows I know it. 

"I won't bring the subject up," he agrees. "But I won't lie if he asks me about it."

"I'm not askin' you to lie," I assure him. "But if he does ask you directly, can you let me know right away that he's been told?"

"Yes, I can do that."

"Well, then, I think we're good," I tell him. Hopefully, and only half in jest, I add, "Unless you want to take charge of Operation ‘Trip Tucker, Have You Lost Your Cotton-Pickin' Mind’?"

He laughs aloud then, and tells me, "You're doing just fine, son, and nobody who'd be willing to take over would have a better chance of success than you. I'm afraid you're stuck with it."

"Yeah, thanks a lot." He knows me well enough to realize that my thanks are more sincere than my sarcastic tone would indicate, but I give him a wink and a grin as I shake his hand anyway. "See you in an hour at the Morning Meeting."

"I'll be there with bells on!" he assures me.

Just before the door whooshes shut behind me, I call over my shoulder, "That might frighten the ladies!"

The last I hear from him is a shout of laughter, and I have to admit, I feel a whole lot better.

* * *

**Chapter Twenty-Nine**

**Ceremony**

_Commander Richard Kelby_

I'm so wound up right now, if I was a few years younger or not surrounded by quite so many people, I might be bouncing with excitement –or, if I hadn't just gone to the head, doing the potty dance due to anxiety. In just a few minutes, I'm going to get started on the biggest project I've ever been trusted to handle, but first there are a last few legal formalities to be handled.

And a speech.

That I'm expected to give.

Which will be broadcast live throughout the station.

And reported by Marla Moore on the Imperial News Network's evening broadcasts all over the Empire.

So, not much at all then. I can even ignore the thought that the Empress herself might be watching.

Because I'm the one who convinced the commodore that turning the signing of a couple of documents into a little ceremony would be good for morale.

I'm still convinced I'm right about that, but once it became clear that the commodore wouldn't allow me to delegate the speech to anyone else, I kind of wished he would have talked me out of it. But no, he just impressed upon me how important it was that I not screw it up.

_"You wouldn't be doin' it if I didn't think you could, Rich. It never bothered you to talk to the press before."_

_Now that stung. "Chief, I apologized for that," I reminded him. "I might not have understood at the time the trouble I was causing, but I get it now and I really am sorry."_

_He waved away my objection._

_"This has nothin' to do with that. I accepted your apology an' as far as I'm concerned that's all water under the bridge now. This isn't revenge. But like it or not, Jupiter Station is kind of a big deal, an' if you want to take a leadership role around here, every once in a while, you're gonna be in the public eye._

_"It doesn't have to move mountains, it just needs to reassure people that things are ticking over as they should up here. Keep it short, keep it simple, keep it upliftin', an' don't speak ill of the dead. Once you've written it, have Janis Crawley give it a once over."_

_"Major Crawley, sir?" I may be no particular hand at writing speeches, but I’m momentarily bewildered as to why our head of station security should need to look at it first._

_"To make sure nothin' in it could compromise Imperial security," he said with a brief smile. "You'd be surprised what might. I once had a joke about a captain maintainin' a Nuvian masseuse on Risa for his exclusive use struck from a speech I was givin' at an awards dinner, only to find out later that one of the captains being honored had been doin' exactly that, with funds not intended for his personal use, an' Imperial Security didn't want him to know they knew about it until they were ready to arrest him."_

Well, I won't be cracking wise about any Starfleet captains, that’s a risky idea at best, but I did make sure Major Crawley had ample time to review my speech. All she did was make a couple of grammatical corrections.

Sometimes it's strange to me, the things the Empire decides need to be marked with ritual. As it turns out, handing over a potential crime scene for repair and reconstruction isn't a simple matter of the chief investigator sending an e-mail to the guy in charge of rebuilding the place telling him, ‘Okay, you can start work tomorrow.’ You’d think it would be, but it isn’t.

First, there is a legally prescribed period of two weeks after the final report is published during which any interested parties can object to the scene being released or demand a guided tour from the investigating authority to satisfy them that the investigation was thorough and the conclusions sound. I'd never heard of any such law myself, and when I mentioned at one of the morning meetings my surprise that it hadn't been taken off the books by now because it could really complicate things for a busy, vital installation like Jupiter Station, Commodore Tucker went off at me like a photon torpedo.

_"Goddamnit, Kelby! Don't you realize that's one of the few laws left that really benefits the little people?" he practically hollered at me. "It's called the 'Right of Review' an' I happen to personally know one very brave, very clever lawyer who has used it in two different cases to help secure survivors' benefits for the families of 'Fleeters who were killed in trainin' drills. Their captains were accusin' them of cowardice an incompetence, but 'anonymous sources' reported it was the captain’s failure to follow his engineers' maintenance advice that got one killed an' that the other was set up by his SiC._

_"Under the law, an' with permission from the next-of-kin, that lawyer petitioned to personally examine every survivin' member of the crews of those two ships. He never got the chance, because in each case the captain withdrew his charges within a week, the one fella's SiC was involuntarily transferred to a ship on the front lines, an' the survivors' benefits were paid as lump sums into trusts that will help support the widows for the rest of their lives an' provide for the children until they're grown. It's a pity the truth never came out, but at least those babies didn't go hungry."_

_"Well, that's fine if they did their duty, but what if the captain was right in either or both of those cases? What if someone's family just doesn't want to accept reality? How long could we run this station without a sickbay?"_

_"You really think the Empire would forget to protect itself from somethin' like that?" he scoffed. "For one thing, the Right of Review can be suspended for a ship that's needed in battle. The admiralty gets to decide which ships are needed, an' the Empress just has to sign off._

_"Then, if the admirals aren't willin' to help a captain out by sendin' him into battle, there's a counter-process called a 'Review of Record.' If a proper investigation is completed an' the lead investigator is confident of his results, he can submit a request to have his files reviewed by three senior officers who are required to work through the evidence an' conduct their own investigations until they reach a consensus an' then make a recommendation to the JAG office._

_"I was part of one of those review committees, once, an' we read every report that security chief submitted, examined every piece of physical evidence he'd collected, re-interviewed every person he'd talked to, an' talked to a few people he didn't. We tried our damnedest to find fault with the investigation, because we couldn't help but think about how our families would cope without our benefits an' with the ruination of our names an' reputations an' all the consequences that holds for them. But in the end, we found the MACO who'd investigated the case had done his job an' reached a sound conclusion._

_"Still, we were allowed to take into account things the MACO investigator couldn't, like what the officer had been asked to do, an' what he'd already been through just prior to the incident in question. Since none of us were too sure that we could have succeeded where he failed, we recommended that his record be changed from desertion to a first offense of dereliction of duty an' that, in light of fifteen years of loyal service prior to the incident, his family should get seventy-five percent of his benefits._

_"There was a good judge on that case. She made our recommendation a legal order. Some judges, wantin' to curry favor with the powers that be by savin' the Empire money, or just bein' stingy bastards, I guess, just publish the panel's findin's without changin' the decision on benefits. Even that helps the survivors a little bit, because while they don't get any money from the Fleet, at least they don't have to defend themselves against the accusation of havin' a traitor or a coward in the family an' if their financial situation is bad enough, they're not disqualified from gettin' public aid._

_"It's one part of our legal system that works **exactly** as it was meant to, Kelby, so don't fuckin' knock it!"_

I was so flabbergasted by his angry rant that I froze up. I think he could have smashed me in the face with a sledgehammer and I wouldn't even have tried to duck, I was so dumbfounded. I think most of the others in the room were completely taken aback too, it was like lightning out of a clear sky and that’s not normally like the Chief; maybe it was the total shock that immobilized everyone. In the end it was Colonel Burnell, of all people, who still attends the morning meeting several days a week even though he defers to Major Crawley on all matters related to station security, who talked the Commodore down.

_"Respectfully, Commodore, I don't think Mr. Kelby was objecting to the law," he said, his voice calm and non-committal. "Rather, I suspect he was merely seeking to learn more about something he didn't understand. As a matter of fact, I was not aware of the details of the law as you explained it, either, and if I may say so, sir, I think you have done a most thorough job of schooling us all."_

Sometimes, Burnell can be so subtle I really don't know how to take him, and maybe that's one of the reasons he scares me. I've been thinking about it for days, and I still don't know if that bit about the commodore 'schooling us' was meant to be a gentle reprimand to him for losing his temper or a mild compliment about his knowledge of the law. Either way, the commodore had the good grace to look a little ashamed and to apologize.

_He turned red up to the tips of his ears and fell silent for a long moment, his stormy gaze now fixed on Austin rather than me; but Burnell just looked back at him steadily, ice meeting fire. I'd have been willing to bet the boss was literally biting his tongue to stop himself from saying something else he might regret, but for all that he obviously feels deeply about the matter we’ve been discussing, he’s basically a fair guy who knows when he’s been called on unfair behavior. When he finally spoke, he was clearly taking pains to control himself._

_"You're right, Austin," he enunciated so carefully it was almost mechanical. "I suppose I did overreact." Turning to me, he said, "In the future, Rich, you need to stick up for yourself, son. I think everyone here now knows that I underestimated you once, an' I regretted it. You deserve better from me. If I ever accuse you again of somethin' that just isn't true, I expect **you** to set me straight. Go ahead an' interrupt me if you have to. My bark is usually worse than my bite, an' I guarantee the other people around this table will back you up if I'm in the wrong. It's happened before an’ I’m sure it’ll happen again, ‘cause I’m a fallible human bein’ like the rest of you. But still, I’m sorry for chewin’ you out like that."_

_Then he looked around the table and made eye-contact with everyone there._

_"There's no excuse for my poppin’ off at Rich the way I did, but as an explanation, I'd like to say that, while I know you all lost people you cared about in the explosion, as the CO of this station, I bear a personal responsibility for every one of those lives. To think that anyone would seek to deny or withhold the benefits due their survivors just… Hell, it makes me mad enough to want to chew nails an' spit tacks!"_

_"I don't think that's what Rich was suggesting, Boss." Rostov spoke up on my behalf, his tone still a bit tentative._

_"I know it wasn't, Mike," the commodore said, calmly enough, "but there are others who have, an' I think the only thing that prevented it was havin' the Empress on **our** side."_

_He refused to name names, but that revelation came just the day after his last meeting with the admiralty, so we all figured there was at worst a twenty-five percent chance of guessing who it was._

Once the two week waiting period ends, which it did last night, there are documents that need to be signed and authenticated with retinal scans and voice prints. The voice prints require the involved parties to read aloud prescribed legal statements describing the site that is changing hands, naming the person relinquishing authority over the site and the person accepting it, and affirming that the person accepting it will turn over any potential evidence that is discovered in the course of reconstruction. From what I read, it actually takes about ten minutes to sign and authenticate all the records, record the statements, and transmit them to the Imperial Judicial Archives.

It was _my_ big idea to turn the handover into a ceremony. 

Foolishly, I thought once the commodore was sold on the idea, he'd hand it off to someone who routinely plans and organizes ceremonial functions. No, of course not; it's my baby now. 

I think the world of Commodore Tucker. Maybe I always have and just didn't know it. Maybe that's part of the reason I was so pissed off when he took Hess and Rostov and more than half the engineering crew of the _Enterprise_ with him to Jupiter Station and dumped me on Utopia Planitia.

But sometimes I really do think I could kill him and not lose as much as a wink of sleep over it. In fact, over the past couple of weeks, I've even fantasized about going cheerfully to my death after eagerly confessing my crime. My motive? _Schadenfreude._ He was just too damned amused by my suffering.

_"I think that's a fine idea, Rich," he'd said with a mischievous grin the moment I suggested it. "We'll get all the command staff turned out in their dress uniforms…" This got me the evil eye from most of my colleagues around the table. Nobody likes the dress uniform. "…maybe a couple of the admirals…" This brought on the eye rolls. Perhaps the only thing that can make a function more uncomfortable than the dress uniform is the presence of the admiralty. "…an’ top it off with someone from the government, probably the Minister of Defense!" Mike Rostov actually cracked his knuckles and glared at me, while the commodore, clearly carried away by his own imagination, was as gleeful as a kid throwing snowballs. "Eloise, soon as we're finished here, get a hold of someone at IMRO. I wanna talk to them about gettin' us some news coverage. Rich here is gonna give us a real dog an' pony show!"_

The ceremony itself was easy enough to organize. _"Talk to Eloise,"_ I'd been told when I admitted that I had no idea where to start. _"Damned near everything that happens on this station pops up on her sensors eventually. She'll know who can help you out."_

Turns out there's an entire committee with a core of about twenty official members who have volunteered to plan ceremonial and social events for the station throughout the year and almost five hundred additional 'members-at-large' who don't usually show up for the meetings but lend a hand with the grunt work of actually decorating and setting up chairs and so forth. They've done a fine job here today with balloons and bunting and flags, the Imperial Seal on the podium and little program cards with a schedule of events printed on them for the attendees. It seems like a hell of a lot of effort and a surprising amount of expense for a little ceremony that should only last twenty minutes or so, but Crewman Cunningham from the galley and Ensigns Hart and Heynem from ops insisted it had to be done. I couldn't even talk them out of the cocktail hour before the event, which, as the keynote speaker, I had to attend. (At least Cunningham is working the bar and I could arrange beforehand for him to make my gin and tonic light on the gin and heavy on the tonic so I needn't worry about slurring my way through my speech.)

Admiral Gardener happens to be the only one of the Starfleet senior command staff who could make it, and for some reason he and Commodore Tucker both seem keen to avoid one another. So I spend most of the cocktail hour conversing with the admiral and the Minister of Defense, Faiz Bahar, who will give a brief speech of his own and then introduce me. When I’m finished, the commodore and Major Crawley will complete the last step of turning over the facility for reconstruction, and then a pre-recorded message from the Empress will play. The ceremony will end with me asking Commodore Tucker for permission to begin work, and once he gives it, I will command my people to get started.

That last bit, having my team start work as the finale of the ceremony, was my idea, and as a side benefit (entirely unintended) it made me a hero to my crew. The woman from IMRO liked the image of Imperial industriousness it created, but she didn't like the idea of sixty engineers in faded, worn, and stained coveralls parading past the television cameras to swarm over what is going to be the Empire's most advanced medical facility. Hart and Heynem suggested they all be provided with new uniforms, and when the commodore got wind of that, he asked to use the opportunity to debut the new female engineering uniforms he had Anna Hess, Liz Cutler, Julie Massaro, and Jenn Kelly design. According to the IMRO officer, the newly-designed uniforms are just 'too perfect' because they give the media the opportunity for a 'nice little sidebar about creativity and innovation for personal safety’. Though Anna, Julie, and Jenn aren't thrilled with the idea of giving an interview that excludes Liz, they're happy enough to have the opportunity to trumpet their success and praise the commodore's leadership and practical concern for his female engineers and will make a point, I'm sure, of naming Liz as part of the team.

"…Commander Richard Kelby."

It's just dumb luck that I've surfaced from my deep thoughts in time to hear Minister Bahar introduce me. Sometimes, in the Empire, the most dangerous enemy is boredom. Boredom leads to inattention, and I'm sure the minister would have been annoyed, offended, and worst of all, embarrassed if I'd have missed my cue and left him hanging. Embarrassing the Minister of Defense, even if he is just a civilian stuffed shirt with no real power who answers to the Empress and General Reed, would still be enough to get me in some real hot water – and Commodore Tucker, too, because he's the one who put me in charge of this project.

Fortunately, I'm just aware enough and prepared enough to move smoothly to the podium when I’m called up. I thank Minister Bahar for his introduction, Admiral Gardener for gracing us with his august presence, Commodore Tucker for the confidence he has shown in trusting me to head the project, Colonel Burnell and Major Crawley for the swift and thorough investigation of the accident, and the Jupiter Station Social Committee for arranging the ceremony. It takes all of thirty seconds, but it gives me time to settle in and properly honors dignitaries and worker bees alike.

The commodore and Major Crawley both advised me to read my speech from the teleprompter when the time came, warning me that even the briefest lapse can lead to an awkward pause that takes on an unintended meaning in the minds of the audience or, worse yet, an inappropriate improvisation that takes the unwitting speaker into the taboo. I was determined to speak naturally and from memory, but now I'm grateful for their advice. Just hours ago, I knew what I was going to say by heart, but somewhere between the cocktails and the thank-yous, my opening line has evaporated from my memory. Fortunately, with just the briefest glance at the prompter screen, I'm back on track, and the effort of memorizing what I intended to say isn't wasted because I am able to speak with feeling rather than reading the text from the screen like an automaton.

"Three weeks ago yesterday, the Empire lost nearly forty of its best and brightest in a terrible accident that occurred just beyond those doors." I turn halfway and gesture to the doors behind me. "To most citizens of the Empire they were loyal soldiers – heroes, if not in life, then certainly in their deaths, for they all died serving their Empress. To those of us who worked beside them day in and day out, and to the families they left behind, they were far more than soldiers and heroes. They were respected colleagues, trusted friends, and loved ones."

'Heroes' might actually be a stretch for most of the medics and technicians who died in the blast, but ceremonies such as this one demand a little hyperbole, and nobody's going to argue with me publicly praising the dead. As for 'respected colleagues, trusted friends, and loved ones,' well, almost everybody I've ever known in the Fleet has had at least two of the three, at least up until the relationship threatened an opportunity for promotion or brought on the risk of punishment. I guess it's Human nature; despite all the deceit, backstabbing, and selfishness the Empire thrusts upon us, we need each other.

"Last week, it was right and proper for all of us to take a moment to mourn and mark their passing. It was a reminder that even in times of triumph and prosperity, life can be harsh and unexpected tragedy can befall us at any moment.

"But the time for looking back has past.

"One of humanity's best traits, one of the most important characteristics we share as a race, is our resilience. When dealt a setback, we learn from it, build upon it, rise up, and push forward again. From the first time one of us struck a spark from a flint to start a fire, to the wheel and the gear, to man power and then horsepower, the steam engine, internal combustion, fusion, and warp drive, we have always been pushing forward. The poet Robert Browning said, '…man's reach should exceed his grasp,/ Or what's a heaven for?' 

"As a race, we have done more than merely exceed our grasp. We have breached the heavens, colonized them, and now we claim the stars."

Privately, I think the Empire is growing too rapidly, stretching our resources too thin, but since conquering is what the Empire does, any expansionist themes are bound to be well-received.

"For decades now, Jupiter Station has served as the primary staging ground for many of our greatest leaps forward. Our most successful military campaigns, our most lucrative trade caravans and prospecting expeditions, and our most courageous colonists have departed from this place. Hundreds of ships, thousands of people, come and go on a daily basis. We have always been the largest and busiest orbital station in the Empire, and like the Empire itself, we continue to grow and expand, and like the Human race itself, when dealt a crushing blow, we learn from it, build upon it, and push forward.

"So it is with pride and purpose that I am privileged to announce today that we are _not_ rebuilding the Jupiter Station Sickbay. We are building in its place a new and better facility, the Jupiter Station Memorial Research and Teaching Hospital, the Empire's first comprehensive, acute-care, orbital hospital. With two fully-equipped surgical suites, a physiotherapy center, an isolation ward, a cutting-edge laboratory, video-consultation capabilities with any hospital in the quadrant, an intensive-care ward, seven classified research suites, in- and out-patient psychiatric care, confidential addiction recovery services, a sexual health clinic, and a two-cot nursery for expectant civilians who might arrive … unexpectedly…" I pause a moment to let the audience chuckle. "…Jupiter Station Memorial will surpass any planetary facility of the same size. 

"This new facility will be a monument to those we have so recently lost, and another leap forward in Humanity’s drive to conquer the stars."

I am not the most dynamic speaker, and it was not the most rousing speech, but I get a healthy round of applause, a whistle or two, and a couple of cheers as I thank my audience and step back from the podium. A glance at Commodore Tucker reveals that he is clapping as hard as anybody else, and when I catch his eye, he gives me a wink and a nod. I return the nod and can't help smiling. It seems I have fulfilled his requirements to keep it short and uplifting and not to speak ill of the dead.

Next Minister Bahar calls up Major Crawley and Commodore Tucker to complete the process of transferring jurisdiction of the site from the MACO investigative team to the Corps of Engineers. They already did most of the work ahead of time, the entire transaction being too long and dull for a public performance. The last two minutes of the handover play out almost like wedding vows, with the major sternly asking the commodore a series of questions to which he solemnly replies, "I will…I will…I will." I’m guessing the resemblance isn’t lost on them, either, but if either feels the temptation to smile they control it perfectly. I wouldn’t be surprised if at some future point there will be a jokey reference to it at one of our planning meetings, but they both know there’s a time and a place for everything.

The Empress's speech that follows conveniently echoes the themes of expansion, learning from setbacks, and honoring our dead that I expressed in my own. I won't allow my ego to imagine that her speechwriter drew inspiration from me, but I’m certain the echoing of my ideas is, if not actually intentional, then at least accepted as a happy coincidence. The moment it was decided the Empress would record an address, I was required to send a copy of my speech to the Imperial Director of Communications. If anyone had found a problem with the Empress repeating me I would have been told to change my speech. 

When she finishes promoting the mission of Imperial expansion, she announces that a plaque bearing the names of all the humans who perished in the blast will be displayed at the main entrance to Jupiter Station Memorial. She ends by reading aloud the names of the fallen, in descending order of rank and alphabetically within ranks, starting with General Jay 'Alpha' Hayes and ending with Crewman first Class Mirka Vukovic; and if they weren't all heroes in life, they become so in death as their names fall from her lips. The omission of one Doctor Phlox-tunnai-oortann is only obvious to those of us who spent the last year with him lurking about on the station, and frankly, knowing Phlox from his days on _Enterprise,_ even if it weren't suicidal, I doubt anyone would care to object. 

She signs off by wishing us well and reminding us that the entire Empire is watching. After the screen fades to black, the high, sweet, lonesome sound of a bosun's whistle trickles into the silence, my cue to wrap things up. I rise from my chair and walk with a solemn, measured pace to Commodore Tucker, who has risen to receive me. He stands comfortably at parade rest waiting for me to reach my mark and fire off a crisp salute. Then he snaps to attention himself, returns the salute, and acknowledges me.

"Commander Kelby?"

"Permission to begin work, sir?"

He takes about three seconds to look at the crowd. I have no doubt this is a calculated dramatic pause for the cameras. When it comes to getting a job done, the man's usually as practical as a hyperspanner, but when circumstances call for it, he can put on a show better than anyone I've ever seen.

"Permission granted," he replies briskly. 

I complete a sharp right face, and in my best command voice, something I'm not ashamed to admit I practiced for several minutes in front of the mirror in my quarters, I call, "Engineers, attention!"

Seventy-five people, my entire team, all three shifts, nearly a third of the audience, rise as one, gear in hand. 

"You know your mission. You have your orders. Do good work!" I instruct them.

Julie Massaro takes over then. "First team, GO!"

We practiced deploying the crews several times yesterday, and it goes like clockwork now as a dozen or so people from each side of the crowd march down to the front, around the dais, and up to the doors. Two by two, they step over the threshold, quickly don their helmets, goggles, and safety belts – they're already wearing their work gloves as part of their new uniforms – clip onto one of the waiting safety lines, and float off into the cavernous space; the gravity in there won’t be switched on until most of the work has been done to get the internal superstructure in place. It’s a whole lot easier to position huge slabs of duranium plating when you can turn them with the push of a finger, not to mention the convenience of having floors under your feet. 

Already I can hear Marla Moore speaking quietly into her microphone about the precision with which my team moves, "as one would expect from the Imperial Fleet's top engineers". The commodore promised her a live interview so long as she keeps her camera trained on the doors until the last of my people are through in order to give their friends and family back home the thrill of seeing them on television. In our practices it took about seven minutes to get everyone into the work area, a long time for a live camera feed of not much happening, and an eternity of being grilled by a reporter. I'm not sure there is an appropriate way for my team to collectively express their gratitude for such a magnanimous act on his part, but I'll certainly make a point of thanking him on their behalf.

As the broadcast ends and the audience breaks up and returns to their duties, Minister Bahar and Admiral Gardener drift toward Colonel Burnell and Major Crawley for some small talk. With Julie well in charge of deploying the teams, I peel away and head back to my quarters to change into a work coverall. The commodore also promised he'd keep the press off my back today, which, after the crap I pulled last year, is more than I deserve. I think he's doing it because he realizes that, now that I don't want to screw with him anymore, I'm really not comfortable about talking with the press.

I'll have to be sure to thank him for that, too.

* * *

**Chapter Thirty**

**Recollection**

_Commodore Charles Tucker III_

It’s not easy, shaving time to spend in the bunker when I’ve more to do on Jupiter Station than I have hours in the day to do it, but I reckon these few first weeks with General Disorder are so important to all the plans I’m suddenly hatching that I hand off work to my deputies and tell them to learn the art of delegating. Kelby's ceremony was a massive pain in the ass, but apart from giving him a few words of advice, I didn't have to do much to make it happen. He did all of the heavy lifting, and whether he knows it or not, it was well worth the trouble to get people's minds off the disaster of the explosion and make them start thinking about the station as the brightest jewel in the Imperial Fleet's crown again. In that speech of his, he did a hell of a good job reminding everyone that we're all about moving forward and looking ahead. Our public profile determines what opportunities we're offered as new projects are rolled out, and it's not possible to overestimate the importance of having people think of Jupiter Station as a place where good things happen. 

Now that I've brought Hess and Rostov into the loop, I'm sure my other department heads, to some degree, sense that something's up, but they're sensible enough not to ask. In the wake of the explosion in Sickbay, it's easy enough for us all to pretend I'm just busy with that. Even Kelby is smart enough to mind his own damned business, though I suspect putting him in charge of upgrading our Sickbay to a proper hospital and making him organize his little ceremony has kept his thoughts too busy to allow much time for worrying about what I might be up to. All he's done so far was tell me, 'Anything you need, Chief, just say the word, and I'm on it.'

I can't deny I'm finding him a lot more likeable than I used to back on _Enterprise_ , but liking the guy and trusting him with the kinds of things that I need to get done on the downlow are about as far apart as a friendly game of ‘Go’ in one of the rec. rooms and the crazy chess game I've started with Reed and some other power-players in the Empire. So I just thanked him, and when Hess confirmed he was ready to build his own ship, I gave him the choice of that or rebuilding my Sickbay. Imagine my surprise when he went and chose the Sickbay!

I'm not entirely sure how I feel about that, but I sure am tickled with the way he and Jeremy took the ball and ran with it. Jupiter Station Memorial Research and Teaching Hospital. Son of a bitch!

I’ll be honest, so far I’m not feeling all that hopeful, about Reed, that is. Sure, he’s been cooperative (kind of), and it’s not hard to see that Liz is delighted he’s been so restrained. But though I don’t have the heart to squash her hopes, personally I’m a long way from convinced. For one thing, I’m not sure his memory’s fully functioning yet – Miguel warned us that things would probably come back to him in spurts over time, and until we’re absolutely sure that we’re dealing with the full deck, any compliance from him really isn’t reliable. Not that I ever relied on him for anything anyway, except for being a vicious little bastard.

But even without that, I’m still not buying his acquiescence. I went to a circus once, I forget where – something to do on shore leave, in between visiting the whorehouses. It was a crappy little affair, scraping a living somehow, and one of the sideshows was a zoo, with a few mangy things in it that people would pay half a credit extra to poke a stick at.

Most of the things had been poked too often to rouse up – much like some of the stock in the whorehouses, in fact. But in one of the cages, hunched up because it was way too big for it but nobody had anything the right size and making something would have been way too much effort, was that world’s equivalent of a wolf.

He didn’t waste time snarling. He bided his time, saving his strength for when the stick jabbed in through the bars; the rest of the time he just crouched there and glared, yellow eyes burning with hatred. But as soon as the stick came in, _then_ you saw the teeth. He’d attack it in an absolute frenzy, tearing it to shreds – and then as soon as it was done with, he went back to the glaring. Of course, the customers loved it; they were lining up to buy sticks. Must have made the owner a year’s profits before its spirit broke like all the others’, or it gave up eating and starved itself to death.

Reed’s way, _way_ too cunning to let on what he’s truly thinking. You won’t catch _him_ glaring. But he’s caged and he knows it, and sometimes when he’s not concentrating real hard on keeping the pretense up I see the unforgiving glitter come into his eyes, and my heart just sinks. When that happens, I find myself wondering all over again what in the hell I was thinking to even hope that a guy like him can be turned, or that Liz Cutler might just possibly beat all the odds and prove the rest of us wrong.

Miguel’s right when he says that memories will come in surges. One afternoon I walk into Malcolm’s room just as Liz finishes feeding him what passes for lunch – a small bowl of milky rice and an even smaller pot of yogurt. His gaze is abstracted; he’s staring at the monitor, where some program or other is showing kids talking about their pets.

The change in his expression alerts me, but she doesn’t catch it in time, and I’m not quite fast enough slapping my hand down on the remote control. Malcolm has seen a fish in an aquarium.

His whole body has gone rigid, and his eyes turn towards Liz with this awful look of horror and furious accusation. If he hadn’t just swallowed the last of the yogurt, I swear he’d have spat it at her.

I think he’s actually so stricken at first he can hardly remember how to talk. But then, before I can intervene, he gets his mouth into gear. “You!” he hisses. “ _You were there!”_

Of course, I go to answer, because I’m not having her blamed for that, but something makes me pause. Liz has fought her own battles all these years, and she needs to fight this one; Malcolm’s suddenly vulnerable, and if she can connect with him, get past the fury, that’ll be a huge step forward. Not that I’m leaving her to it altogether of course – I just watch and wait, ready to step in if it gets nastier than she can cope with.

She doesn’t break eye contact, though I’m guessing it’s almost more than she can bear to have the man she loves staring at her with such loathing. But for me, strange as it probably sounds, this is the first real positive I’ve seen. He remembers, and he’s _appalled._ That has to mean at some level, probably deeper than he has the first idea of, he trusts her. If he hadn’t, the perceived betrayal might anger him, might even shock him some, but it definitely wouldn’t hurt; and if ever I’ve seen hurt printed on a guy’s face, it’s there on his. Here, if we can use this right, is our way into him. _If_ we can find a way through the human minefield that is Malcolm Reed.

This betrayal, on top of all the others he’s endured, is going to be incredibly hard for him to handle. I see at once that it’s almost as hard for Liz to handle his instant assumption that she was there because she was in cahoots with all the other bastards who were abusing him, but nevertheless after a shaken moment to catch breath and order her thoughts she fires right back at him. 

“Yes, I was there!” she tells him, and though at the start her voice is shaking with tears, almost at once she bravely steadies it. “I was there because I wanted there to be someone who cared about you. I was there because I wanted one person who touched you to do it with kindness. I couldn’t help you, there were cameras all around and if just one person had reported to Phlox that I was exceeding my orders, nothing would have pleased him better than to have me removed, or even accused of sabotage, if he thought he could get away with it. But if all I could do was be there for you, that was what I was going to do.”

“That’s actually what happened, towards the end, Malcolm.” I think this is my moment to add my two credits. “Little Liz here didn’t think you were gettin’ proper care so she went tellin’ tales to teacher. Cost her in the end of course; soon’s he got his chance Phlox got her taken off the case an' marooned in the monitor room so she wouldn’t be able to look after you anymore. But for what it’s worth, what she did took more courage’n I’d care to have to find. Went straight to the top. Told Em to her face that Phlox wasn’t doin’ his job right.”

The searing stare moves back to her, but it unfocusses; he’s sorting through the memories, trying to match up what we say with what he can remember and detect the lies he’s sure are there.

“She was there for you alright,” I add more quietly. “Every day, rubbin’ gel into your skin to help protect it. Never took a day off. Put up with all the names the other techs called her for carin’. You think humans are designed to live in water for weeks on end? Think again, Mal.”

“If skin remains immersed for any length of time, it literally starts to break down,” Liz explains softly. “It becomes supersaturated and the top layers shed off. The new skin underneath is a prime site for infection. And though we did everything we could to keep your environment germ-free, we couldn’t make it completely sterile, not with people coming and going all the time. 

“The stuff they put you in wasn’t water exactly – it was a highly specialized fluid, designed to work with your lungs and provide a non-hostile environment for your body. Another thing I warned Em about was that lying still for so long was causing you to lose physical condition and if it went on long enough the stress of childbirth could quite possibly kill you. So the tank was to both protect you from sores and atrophy from lying still on a bio-bed, and provide your body with resistance to force you to exercise whenever you moved.

“But still, they couldn’t make it safe for you to be in it 24/7 without helping your skin. That was my job. That was what I did, every day. And I was so happy to be there doing it. I hoped you’d just somehow get the feeling that the person who did it … cared.”

For long moments he goes on staring. I’ve been the recipient of his stare a time or two, and I can tell you, at maximum wattage it’s enough to burn the registry numbers off a freighter's hull.

Then, at long last, he speaks. Slowly. “I … remember.”

With an obvious effort, he pulls up his knees and folds his arms around them. I’m no psychologist but even I can tell this is a deeply defensive gesture.

“You remember, Malcolm, but do you believe me?”

He puts his forehead down so we can’t see his face anymore. “I don’t know what I believe.”

From the sound of his voice, distrust and indecision and that stubborn thread of hope are tearing him apart. Hell, how long has it been since he trusted anyone except Em and Alpha – and look what he got for trusting _them._ If it were me lying there I’d guess the sight of Liz’s earnest little face would convince me, right enough, but he’s lived in a world where folks would swear snow was hot just to stop him looking at them. For all he knows, Liz is just another sweet, convincing little liar, trying to talk her way out of trouble. He sure remembers all the reasons she has for not wanting him mad at her for something like this – she’s had more than enough experience of his fists.

“We can’t make you believe it, Malcolm,” I say into the quiet as two big tears make their way down Liz’s face. “I guess this is one of the times when you’ve gotta make up your own mind. But I’ll tell you now, if you decide you can’t trust this woman’s word, you’ll be makin’ one of the biggest mistakes you ever made in your whole goddamn life.”

He glances up at me. His eyes have narrowed, but apart from that he’s smoothed all the expression off of his face. “But you _would_ say that, wouldn’t you?”

“I wouldn’t if it wasn’t true,” I say levelly, "Remember, the first time I visited you here, I promised you I wouldn't lie to you. I reckon it’s time you started bearin’ that in mind." Then I hold out an arm to Liz. “C’mon, baby girl. I think the best thing we can do right now is to leave Malcolm here to think things over. Maybe a bit of peace an’ quiet may help him get his thinkin’ straight.”

I think she hopes he’ll protest, say he does believe her. But I’m guessing that would take more trust than General Chaos has in his whole body right now. Whatever hope he may have, it’s at war with the suspicion that must have been part of him for longer than he can remember. It won’t win easily, if it wins at all.

In the meantime, I think it’s kinder to get Liz out of there. I’m sure that when I’m done mopping her up I can find something to take her mind off things, if it’s only checking over the requisitions Anna signed off on yesterday. I wouldn’t normally bother because if there’s one thing my deputy is red hot on it’s getting her sums right, but there’s no need for me to let Liz in on that.

He watches as I propel her out of the room. Just before the door shuts behind us I slip an arm around her, dropping it just a little towards her ass just to give him something else to think about. Not that I look around to see, but we’re talking the arch-noticer here. And personally, I’ll eat my radiation monitor if the sight doesn’t make him scowl.


	7. 31-35

**Chapter Thirty-One**

**Being** **_Pack_ **

_Colonel Austin Burnell_

When I am informed that the _Dragon_ is docking, I don't drop what I'm doing and head down there to meet with the security chief, Lieutenant Tanner. My new position as senior field officer for the MACOs ensures that _he_ will wait on _my_ convenience. Still, as Commodore Tucker is prone to saying, 'time is life,' and though I’m in a position to waste as much of Tanner’s as I want, I would never be so discourteous – it only breeds resentment. 

Seeing that I have only three pages left of the monthly readiness report I’m reviewing for the 'Fleet admirals, a courtesy to them which I gladly took over for General Reed because it gives me a voice in the deployment of ships, I advise my secretary to inform Tanner that I’ll arrive to meet with him in fifteen to twenty minutes. I’ve been making marginal notes all along, and after giving the report a full twenty-four hours to percolate through my subconscious brain, I’ll synthesize those notes into a one-page response which I’ll transmit to the admirals on Friday morning to give them time to consider it before their Monday meeting.

The Monday meeting is another of the General's former duties that has quite naturally fallen to me, though I only attend in person once a month. The other three or four Mondays, depending on how the month happens to fall, I join in by secure conference call from my office on Jupiter Station.

A great many things about my work have changed since my promotion. The first thing I did was promote my second in command, Lieutenant Janis Crawley, to major and put her in my previous post, the command of station security. She’s in a difficult position, having to do my former job with me still here on the station, but she’s handled it with impressive grace and dignity. She knows I’m available to give advice, and she has sought me out once or twice, but otherwise, I’m consciously making an effort to keep my nose out of her business. The one and only time one of my former staff tried to go over her head by coming to me when he disagreed with her orders, I blistered his ears with an irate lecture about the chain of command and sent him, literally, crawling back to her to beg forgiveness – with the threat of a day in the agony booth hanging over his head if he ever dared to do something so inappropriate ever again. 

At Commodore Tucker's morning meetings, which I still attend, I make a steadfast point of deferring to Janis whenever the commodore slips and questions me about issues of station security. It is, in fact, the commodore himself who inspired my hands-off approach. 'Pick the right person for the job, an' just let 'em get on with it,' is another of his practical platitudes which has served me well.

To be honest, though, it isn’t just appreciation for Janis’s ability that has me adroitly shifting my shoulders to allow all the appropriate responsibilities of her position to slide onto hers. There are so many new and heavy ones on mine that I simply wouldn’t have the time to deal with hers as well, and I’m thankful that she copes as well as she does. The commodore’s sage advice is paying handsome dividends already.

My new office, though somewhat smaller than the old one, is comfortably appointed and far and away more prestigious for being on the exterior hull – a sign of my rise in the world. The view is quite spectacular, with the swirling storms of Jupiter filling the lower half of the port and the twinkling stars in the space beyond filling the upper. 

I’ve also begun building myself a new staff. Taking another leaf from Commodore Tucker's book, I brought them on the same way he drew Commander Kelby in: I simply gave them a list of their options and let them choose. Though it meant no promotion for either of them, at least not yet, my old friend Jignesh and the lovely Zenobia Towneley have both come willingly into my employ, along with my secretary, a young corporal by the name of Ian Trainor.

I value Jignesh primarily for his interrogation skills; he works with a lot of the elite strike teams, organizing and planning missions against alien rebels and human seditionists. Also, invariably, he brings me back intel on who's jockeying for position in what corner of the Empire and how we can manoeuvre to keep them in their places. 

When Zenobia came to join me, she made a special request that her duties let her travel frequently on Starfleet ships so she can interact with their MACO teams. Given how ready she was to render services to me, I can imagine that she has her own reasons for this, but another pleasant factor of Pack mentality is that we’re not ashamed of our physical hungers the way other humans are; no doubt she will find many ready to oblige her. Conscious that a sexually eager and submissive representative would be one more lure to display the benefits of my service, I was happy to grant her request and use her as my liaison with the New Pack officers. In just twelve weeks she has identified half a dozen more members of the New Pack, and introduced me via encrypted feeds to all of them, identifying me as their Alpha – though I emphatically remind them that I am just standing in for General Reed until he is able to return to full duty. I am careful never to even hint that he is anything less than fit and well, and take pains to remind them that he is now doing the work of three top-ranking officers. I also add that it's only a matter of time until General Hayes's and General Gomez's personal projects and responsibilities are reassigned and properly dispositioned, and then we will have our Alpha back. In the meanwhile, they can come to me for anything they need.

I doubt Commodore Tucker would be best pleased to learn that I am using the opportunity he and the Empress have given me to start building my own pack, but General Reed certainly wouldn't hold it against me. Moreover, neither of them could argue that I am not doing what I think is best for the empire. If Reed comes back, I will be able to hand over to him a larger, integrated, organized Pack. On the other hand, if he does not return at full steam, I will be able to oust him easily and assume his power with the strength of the merged Pack behind me.

Practical and merciless. This is Pack law. _Thus it was, is now and always shall be, world without end. Amen._

My musings have carried me all the way through the readiness report and down to the docking hatch where the _Dragon_ is coupled up to the station. Ian has clearly communicated my approach because I barely have to slow my steps to go from Jupiter Station through the hatch and onto the _Dragon._ Frankly, I prefer it when Ian telegraphs my coming to the ships I am about to visit. Another lesson from the commodore: _Surprise inspections are unnecessary and can only serve to upset the people serving under you. People who take pride in their work only need about fifteen minutes to get the house in order so they can show off their accomplishments with a sense of pride and purpose. On the other hand, people who don't care about what they do will never be ready for an inspection, however much time you give them._

When I board the _Dragon,_ I accept Lieutenant Tanner's greeting and immediately get into his personal space a little bit more than a typically reserved Englishman would be likely to do. If he is not Pack, he will just think me a bit peculiar; if he is Pack, he will give me a sign. In fact, after only a second or two of startled hesitation, he does in fact shift his gaze downward and lick his lips.

Immediately I step out of his space. We will repeat and complete the ritual later, in his office, out of sight of the prying eyes of his shipmates.

The lieutenant then conducts me on a tour of the ship. Frankly, I could take myself on this in half the time from having visited half a dozen or more ships of this class in the past three months, but I'm taking yet another lesson from Commodore Tucker here: _Let people perform for you and let them think you're impressed. It will make them work harder in the future._

I’ve been doing my homework regarding the New Pack. It’s taken a while, but Zenobia has been happy to be of service as regards filling me in on the way things work, and I’ve come to the conclusion that things need to change. 

There’s a lack of respect for the structure, for one thing. They fight among themselves far too much just to achieve small shifts in the hierarchy, and they leave survivors. A fight within the pack should destroy the loser and elevate the victor, and so fighting should only take place where there are real gains to be made, and the risk is worth taking. Minor squabbles are a waste of energy, and they’re going to stop.

Also, they pick on the 'Fleeters far too much. Obviously, these people don't understand what it means to be _Pack_ . They couldn't possibly. But that doesn’t make them fair game for petty torment and it doesn’t mean they don’t deserve fair treatment. _Pack_ or ‘Fleeter, we’re all in the service of the Empire, and a machine whose component parts don’t work together in harmony is a machine that won’t last that long. I reflect wryly as I come to this conclusion that it seems being surrounded by engineers for years is starting to affect my thinking, though that's not entirely a bad thing as they are extremely efficient people and emulating them has helped me streamline many of my sometimes tedious routines.

On our tour of the ship, I get odd impressions now and then that Tanner is curious about me. Clearly, it’s quite out of the question for him to ask me anything; he’s there to provide information, not obtain it. But I think Jignesh would be proud of me for the amount of information I’ve managed to obtain by the time we reach his office, where a meal is waiting for us both.

As the door closes, I wait for the appropriate act of submission. Tanner, however, has decided to risk not delivering it. Rather than tilt his head and bare his neck, he lifts his chin and gives me a defiant stare.

His audacity takes my breath away. If he supposes that because I’m a colonel I’m less dangerous as a dominant member of the Pack, he’s made a serious mistake. An _extremely_ serious mistake.

I honestly don’t think he expects the attack. He doubles up with my fist in his belly, which of course presents his head and shoulders. His uniform rips like worn cotton and my teeth sink into his _splenius capitus_ muscle. This is not a minor reprimand; I taste blood, and hold him there, growling threat, while he shrieks and finally capitulates.

After enough of a pause to scare him, I release him and kick him away. He wisely goes into full abasement posture, down on the floor with his belly exposed, arms and legs bent and splayed, waving in the air, whimpering piteously.

Victory is arousing, and he is not in a position to resist. I snarl down at him softly, tempted, but I think he has already learned a lesson, and he needs to have the bite seen to by a medical professional. How he chooses to explain the wound is his own affair; Zenobia has assured me that the secret of the conditioning we all share is as closely guarded among the New Pack as it is among the Old. Instead, I lean down and catch hold of his face, pulling it around towards me so he has no choice but to meet my eyes now. Then I speak, my voice quiet and hard.

_"Try that again, and you will have to kill me to keep me from killing you."_

He knows I mean it. He drops his gaze, whines submissively and licks my hand.

“We are _Pack_ ,” I continue coldly. “The rules are different now – General Reed’s rules. Pack submit, or they fight to the death. One or the other.” 

The flicker of eyes towards me indicates scared confusion, so I lean closer. “I am in control now. I am dominant. You will submit, or you will die. Is that clear?”

“Colonel.” He licks his lips and nods. Later, in bed, he will demonstrate his absolute understanding of that new law. But for now, dead men learn no lessons and spread no stories, and so I let him escape.

=/\=

But I’m not ashamed to learn from Commodore Tucker as well as from General Reed. In fact, it would be fair to say that the commodore has had the greater influence on my thinking these past few years. Though my loyalty to the general has never wavered (until recently, perhaps, though much of that will depend on how things are when he returns), he has for a long while been a beloved figurehead seen from a distance while the commodore has been a part of my world every day. I’ve seen beyond any doubt that Tucker’s approach to command works better than the reign of terror that operates pretty well everywhere else in the Empire. 

So, borrowing his methods where I can without compromising a discipline that especially with Pack needs to be absolutely unwavering, I begin cultivating a loyalty that relies on more than simply dread of the consequences of failure. And here, once again, Zenobia is invaluable in finding out what makes various people tick. Many of her discoveries are undoubtedly made in bed; when she reports to me I’m inwardly amused by the high gloss of satiation that hangs about her. But no matter what the source or the method of acquisition, the goods are valuable. She finds out not only what people need but what they want, and within reason I arrange for it to happen – more links in the chain of loyalty binding the MACOs to me until such time as General Reed reappears.

I have contacts, and where I don’t have them I make them. I arrange for weapons upgrades that have been requested and despaired of for years, I make desperately-needed gear materialise as though from nowhere. I discover that a transfer from this ship to that will make someone happy and – by extension – harder working; and the transfer happens.

I don’t turn overnight into Father Christmas, of course. I’m still perfectly willing to order people put into an agony booth if it’s the prescribed punishment for an infraction they have committed, and anyone who tries to take advantage of my benevolence soon finds out the hard way that it was a mistake. But good service deserves rewards, and as I become more adept at handing them out, I can almost feel the undertow of eagerness to serve gathering strength. Soon it becomes practically a role all by itself, and Zenobia makes it her own: helping me to keep the loyalty and obedience of both New and Old Pack by keeping me informed of their needs and moods so that I can deploy both gifts and rewards where deserved, and threats and punishment where required.

Sometimes – though not often – I wonder what General Reed would make of my methods. Already I’ve made subtle changes in the relationship between the Pack and the Alpha. If he comes back fighting fit, and ready to retake the reins of power, then he will find out how things have altered. At a guess, if it can be demonstrated to work better than the old way, he will be at least prepared to tolerate its continuance. During one of our briefings I remarked lightly to Zenobia that I’d have to arrange an opportunity for her to convince him of its benefits, and she wasn’t slow to understand what I meant. Her lips moved in a beatific smile, and I made a note to delay their first encounter until I can assess the general’s physical condition. From various remarks made by my secretary Ian, who might have been a virgin when he accepted the post but most certainly is not one now, I suspect that a frontal assault by Zenobia might undo at least six months’ work by the medical team charged with Reed’s recovery, and possibly put an end to him altogether. A development that, however warmly welcomed by the Empire as a whole, would no doubt seriously exasperate Commodore Tucker.

* * *

**Chapter Thirty-Two**

**The Ogre in the Cave**

_Doctor Virginia East_

Well, here I am.

I have to admit that before I ring the chime beside the perfectly innocuous-looking door in front of me, I have to stop and take a deep breath. Even now I’m here – even now I’m about to begin what may well be a defining period of my life, not to mention a horrendously dangerous one – I find it hard to believe exactly where life has led me.

This wasn’t what I expected when I graduated. I had a career mapped out in front of me, and there wasn’t one single solitary junction in it that had the signpost ‘Provide psychotherapy to traumatized homicidal head of the MACOs’... especially given what I’ve found out has happened to him over the past year.

Trip’s an old friend. He’s a smart, decent guy at heart, and I’ve always been glad he’s been successful. I was delighted to get a call from him last week asking if I’d meet up with him for a coffee and a chat while he was in San Francisco. Thing is, I hadn’t the faintest clue what the subject of that ‘chat’ was going to be, and within moments of him starting to tell me I realized I was getting dragged into deeper and more dangerous stuff than I’d ever imagined.

Perhaps it should have been a clue when, rather than asking me to book a flight, he arranged to have me _transported_ (my first time, it was a strangely tingling sensation, but not at all as unpleasant as some of my patients had described) the almost three thousand miles from my office in Georgia to the Shakespeare Garden in Golden Gate Park so we could 'enjoy a little stroll to stimulate our appetites' before sitting down to something considerably more substantial than coffee. Of course, for Trip I'd have made the flight, turning it into a weekend getaway and looking up some old friends from my university days after seeing him, even if we _literally_ only had a cup of coffee and a twenty-minute chat, and I suspect I'm not the only one who would do whatever he asked. He's always been a natural leader, the kind of guy people just want to be around, so it was no surprise when he started making a name for himself not too long after he enlisted. Then, a few years ago, when Empress Sato awarded him the Imperial Medal of Honor and the press started calling him the Hero of the Empire for delivering the _Defiant_ blueprints, I was proud to be able to say I knew him when he was just a nerdy little boy who took the short bus to the high school every morning for advanced classes our middle school didn't offer.

Yeah. He did warn me beforehand, and say that if I wanted to walk away he’d understand. But if there’s anyone alive who could let their sense of self-preservation overrule their curiosity at words like those, I’m not it.

Reed.

Sweet Mother of Mercy, as Mama used to say. The guy who basically cut a living prisoner to ribbons, bleeding him to death by centimeters in front of running cameras.

“You don’t need me to tell you how dangerous he is, when he’s runnin’ free an’ on all cylinders,” Trip had said, leaning forward across the table (this was luckily – or, knowing Trip, very much more than ‘luckily’ – placed out on the edge of a verandah overlooking the lake). “But right now, he’s all but beaten into the ground, an’ not just physically.

“Doesn’t mean he’s gonna be any easier to deal with,” he added, sitting back and cutting into a pancake slathered with butter and swimming in Vermont maple syrup. I honestly don't know how he's kept his figure all these years, not to mention his teeth. It doesn't look like he's gained as much as a kilo since high school. There's no way he can eat like that all the time. “He’s still a mean, ornery little son of a bitch, but at the moment, he’s just lyin’ there waitin’ for the kickin’ to start, because that's about all he _can_ do.”

“And does he have a point?” I inquired, sipping my coffee – mostly, I’ll admit, in the effort to stop my brain from imploding at hearing the supposedly all-powerful General Reed being described quite so casually as a ‘mean, ornery little son of a bitch’.

His look at me was chilly. “I kicked him once, when he was down. Matter of fact, I’ve done it twice, an’ the first time I’d have kicked him to death if someone hadn’t stopped me."

That broke my heart a little. Knowing from my work with veterans what military service to the Empire can do to a man, it shouldn't have been a surprise, but the Trip Tucker I grew up with was then – and as far as I'm concerned, still is – the kindest, most compassionate person I have ever known. Back in the day, I was sweet on him, along with about a dozen other girls I knew who were too insecure to make a move. I never pursued him because Melissa Lyles was my best friend and I didn't want to risk that friendship on the slim chance that he might be seduced by my meager wiles. Besides, Melissa had loved him since the fifth grade, and they were perfectly suited to each other. I never understood why he randomly decided to up and enlist, but he did, and a year later Melissa ran off and eloped with Billy Wainwright. They have two kids, Charlie and Elizabeth, though if Trip doesn't know that, it's not my place to tell him; and Melissa and Billy seem happy enough, even if she does get a little sad and he does get a little angry every time Trip's name is in the news.

"Now, things have changed," Trip continued, oblivious to my reminiscence, yet oddly appropriate to my thoughts. " _I’ve_ changed. An’ what I want to do, _if_ it can be done, is get it through his thick stubborn skull that if he plays ball with me, I’ll play ball with him.”

I raised my eyebrows at him. “Trip Tucker, are you telling me you want to make _friends_ with him? With _General Reed_?”

There were already one or two boats out on the lake, though it was very early morning. It occurred to me that he might as well admit to fancying taking a stroll out to one of them to say hi to the people in it without getting his feet wet.

His grin in response told me he knew exactly what I was thinking. “Well, I’m not lookin’ that far ahead, not yet. But thing is, I’m an engineer an’ so are you, just in a different way. Give me a malfunctionin’ machine an’ I can take it apart an’ find out what’s wrong an’ how to fix it. People, though – they’re a specialist subject, especially people as complicated as Reed. I know where my limitations are. That’s why I called you.

“I’m authorized to hire you at the appropriate rate.” He named a sum that told me he’d done his homework. I respected him for that; the honest truth is that he had the authority to simply tell me my services were required by the military, and I’d have been effectively press-ganged into service for room and board. “But in view of the risks, an’ the level of secrecy that’s gonna have to be involved, I’m willin’ to increase that substantially – in return for your commitment to co-operate with the high security levels, keep this a total secret from _anybody an’ everybody_ , an’ do your damnedest to find out what makes the General tick. Once we know where the problems are, there’s a chance we can do somethin’ about them.”

I thought about the calm precision of the fingers guiding that scalpel. “There are forms of psychosis that are absolutely untreatable. Standard procedure in these cases is euthanasia, both to minimize the cost to the Empire and to reassure its citizens that their welfare is being protected.”

He nodded somberly. “I’m aware of that, Ginny, an’ if it comes to that, that’s what I’ll do – I didn’t rescue the guy to lock him up an’ throw away the key. But I don’t want to get to that point without givin’ him every possible chance, for more than one reason.

“Incidentally–” he pulled back his shirt sleeve, giving me a brief sight of a leather cuff there, with what looked like some extremely sophisticated circuitry built into it – “I’m a believer in protectin’ _my_ people too. This is connected to an interestin’ little device I had inserted into Reed’s chest, an’ if I have to – if he forces me to it – I can kill him with it, an’ there’s not a damn thing he can do about it.”

“That’s going to make him feel like being co-operative, isn’t it?” I said drily.

Trip shook his head. “I have my people to think about an’ they’re not goin’ to be made to pay for me takin’ a risk. He’ll just have to get his head round that. He always protected his own, an’ I’m not apologizin’ for doin’ the same. In fact, I think he might even respect me for it an' appreciate that I still recognize him as a dangerous man, considerin' it's been a long time since anyone has recognized him as any kind of man at all.”

‘If it comes to that, that’s what I’ll do’. A chilling statement, all the more so coming from such a warm, gregarious person as Trip, but I’ve no doubt at all that he meant it. Nobody could have come as far up the ladder as Trip has done without learning to be ruthless when it’s required – the realization makes me feel a little sad all over again – and however secure a prison he might incarcerate an irredeemable general in, the man has thousands of devoted followers and there are eyes and ears everywhere. A grave, on the other hand, puts an end both to hope of rescue and fear of revenge.

And ‘if it comes to that’ is going to be my decision. 'That’ would be a failure on my part to achieve what I’m being paid to do, and maybe not even I would ever truly know if one wrong word or gesture from me at some unrecognized juncture of the process condemned a man to death. A man who might have lived, if I’d done my job better.

To give Trip credit, he knew he was asking something huge of me, with that decision standing at the end of it. He gave me forty-eight hours to think about it. I agonized through two nights’ lost sleep, and then commed him in the bleary light of the second dawn and said I’d do it.

So here I am. The Bunker, a top-secret facility on a lonely, rarely-traveled road in the depths of the Nevada desert, concealed beneath the dilapidated remains of a big old house with a conservatory tacked on one side. (Apparently a crazy old hobo off the roads took up residence in the house some years ago. Obviously his presence there presented a threat so Trip had him checked out; turned out he’d been lobotomized for some crime or other and then turned loose, mad and harmless and hopeless and helpless. Now, unknowingly, he acts as a cover for any activity people see around the place, and tells any occasional passer-by who’ll speak to him that angels come and visit him – oddly enough, not many passers-by actually _do_ want to speak to him, and still less to listen… Strange thing is, though, he’s good with plants and flowers, and he has them blooming in that conservatory in a way it can’t have seen for the best part of a hundred years, an outcome Trip never expected.)

I’m shilly-shallying, trying to put off the plunge. I take a deep breath, and press the chime.

The door swings open so suddenly, I jump. A young MACO, Private Jones by his name badge, greets me with a stiff nod and a formal 'Ma'am' and leads me down the hall to what appears to be a closet. He takes out some kind of electronic device about the size of a flashlight (a transmitter of some kind, I suppose, probably of Trip's invention), and a false wall in the back slides aside to reveal a small elevator. Jones indicates a sign that advises passengers to PLEASE HOLD SAFETY RAIL WHEN CAR IS IN MOTION. I grip it, probably harder than is strictly necessary, and nod that I’m ready. He presses the button for SL3, and I feel us plummeting, faster than any hotel or apartment elevator I've ever ridden, into the depths of the earth.

Once the elevator slows to a stop and the door opens, I precede my escort into the corridor and break out in gooseflesh. It must be ten degrees colder here than it is on the surface, and for the air to be damp, here in the desert, we must be very far underground indeed.

Jones walks past me and leads me down the corridor to a nurse's station. After a brief orientation that mostly involves emergency procedures and a stern admonishment not to 'wander about', he pins a badge on me.

"This is your ID, Ma'am," he explains. "It is the only form of identification the automated checkpoints in this facility will accept. You will sign it out every visit upon your arrival and sign it back in every time you leave. The badge itself will never leave the facility.

“It is also your panic button. All you have to do is smack it hard. If you ever think you are in danger, don't hesitate to use it. At least for the foreseeable future, there will be an armed guard right outside the room whenever you are with General Reed. If you're wrong about the risk, you won't have inconvenienced anybody. If you're right, you won't have time for second thoughts about bothering us. Do you understand?"

My mouth is too dry to speak, so I nod instead, and then follow him when he leads me further down the corridor. We stop beside an unmarked door just like the dozen or so other doors lining the hallway, and he gestures to it as if inviting me to knock before turning to stand his post beside it.

That's when I notice the sidearm on his hip and the impact baton hanging from his belt. I don't doubt he has a knife in his boot, too. Apparently, he is to be my armed guard on this visit.

I take a breath, raise my hand, and hesitate. I look to Private Jones, who breaks character for a moment to give me a wink and a nod and the ghost of a smile.

Setting my shoulders, bracing myself to meet the Ogre, I take another deep breath and rap smartly at the door.

Instead of the male voice I expect, a female one calls, “Just a minute!” But hardly that has passed before the door hisses open and a petite youngish lady in a coverall with medical insignia opens the door.

She looks tense and worried, but she tries to summon a friendly smile. “You must be Doctor East. Commodore Tucker said you’d be here this morning. 

“I’m Lieutenant JG Elizabeth Cutler, the nurse in charge of General Reed's recuperative program under Doctor Salazar. You can call me Liz.” 

“I’m pleased to meet you, Liz.” We shake hands but I don't invite her to call me Ginny just yet. Ours is going to be a professional relationship, after all, and I can always drop the formal address down the road. Private Jones can hardly be used as a barometer of the expected manners here in the Bunker as he is at the bottom of the food chain and has already sent me some mixed signals, so I'd rather start out a mite too formal and encourage the casual address later if the culture of this facility allows it than to start too casual and have to turn around and demand greater formality. “Will you introduce me to General Reed?”

“Oh yes – certainly. I’ve pretty well finished up here, I’ll be out of your hair in just a minute.” She pockets various instruments and a couple of blood samples, and then with a visible straightening of her spine, turns to the bed. When she speaks, the strain in her voice is enough to crack it.

“General Malcolm Reed, this is Doctor Virginia East – Trip mentioned to you she’d be arriving shortly. Doctor East, this is General Malcolm Reed, Commander in Chief of the Military Assault Command, Head of Imperial Security, Supreme Commander of the Imperial Forces, and Chief Advisor to Her Royal Majesty, Hoshi Sato, Empress of the Terran Empire and All the Conquered Worlds.”

The civilities completed (and I didn't miss that she called Commodore Charles Anthony Tucker III, recipient of the Imperial Medal of Honor, Hero of the Empire, Commander of Jupiter Station, and Head of the Imperial Fleet's Corps of Engineers, ‘Trip’), I’m free to look directly at my new patient.

First impressions are not encouraging, despite his sudden promotion from 'Senior' Advisor to 'Chief'.

Of course I’m shocked by his physical condition. He’s a gaunt shadow of the fit, arrogantly assured man who appeared on screens every now and then to make statements on matters of Empire-wide security. But it didn’t need Trip’s words of warning to tell me that regardless of his wasted condition, this is no weakened, terrified individual, thankful for his rescue and willing to buy his continued safety by any means necessary. The shadows of exhaustion beneath his eyes are almost violet, but his gaze is glittering with hostility and suspicion.

It runs once, with deliberation, up and down my body. I’d been prepared for his reception being difficult to take, but for all my experience with difficult patients I’ve never had quite this sensation of being stripped stark naked while icy snakes slither over me.

“Virginia East. Sounds like a district in the local elections, or a railway station. ‘ _The train about to leave from Platform Three is the six-thirty to San Bernardino, calling at Denver, Saint Louis and Virginia East. Please be sure to take your hand luggage when you leave the train.’”_

“I’m pleased to meet you too, General,” I say calmly. “Please don’t imagine you’re being original. If I had a credit for every person to make facetious comments on the subject of my name, I’d be living in a luxury condo in Malibu.”

“Why the fuck don’t you change it then?”

“Because that would deprive me of the opportunity of assessing the personality of every patient who employs that particular tactic. As the Head of the Empire’s Security, I’m sure you’re aware that any means useful for gathering information is valuable, and every statement made by a subject is informative. If nothing else, yours illustrated that you have never travelled by train in the USA, or you would know that no train you describe would go through Kansas without stopping. Even if it was an express, it would almost certainly have to stop in Indianapolis to let people make connections for Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, and Lexington, Kentucky; and it would be coming _from_ San Bernardino in the west, rather than to it.”

That shuts him up, though it doesn’t noticeably moderate the ferocity of his stare. I’m tempted to follow it up by remarking that he clearly failed Geography 101, but establishing that I’m not intimidated by him is one thing, antagonizing him altogether is another. Not that I believe he’s bothered in the least by my supposedly taking seriously a list of locations that he plucked from the air at random, but he’s feeling sore enough without being mocked.

Beside me, Liz is shifting from foot to foot. She’s evidently keen that Reed and I get along, and at least at first she’s destined for disappointment. I can predict with 100% accuracy that the General is one of the members of society who sees no difference between psychologists and psychiatrists and regards all of us as quacks and our practices as little more than voodoo, and that I can look forward to a spectacularly bumpy ride while he reconciles himself to the fact that if he wants to get out of here, I have the key that will unlock one of the doors barring his way.

“I understand you have been subjected to various forms of trauma during the past year, General,” I continue, keeping my voice even. “I believe that if we can form a co-operative relationship I will be able to assist your recovery. That was certainly Commodore Tucker’s hope when he offered me this opportunity.”

His eyes narrow to slits. “Why you?”

“The commodore and I are old friends, and he knows my qualifications are suited to the job.”

“Fucked him, have you?”

“With respect, General, that is irrelevant and really none of your business. I will answer any question that pertains to your treatment and none that does not. Assuming you were asking about my qualifications, I can tell you that I have a Ph.D. in psychology from the UC Berkeley School of Social Sciences and Humanities; I got my M.D. with specialization in Psychiatry from UC San Francisco, and I have extensive experience in treating trauma cases, particularly veterans. I work part time at the Fort Benning VA Outpatient Clinic. And for the record, sir, you are in no position to threaten me and I am not easily shocked.”

The eyes narrow further, to blazing slits. “I’m not in a position to threaten you _yet._ ”

“I accept that correction," I respond with an acquiescent nod. "You should also accept the correction that you are not in a position to threaten me _yet_ , and until or unless I declare myself satisfied with your progress towards recovery, the commodore will not release you, and therefore you never _will_ be in a position to threaten me.”

Predictably, Reed reacts with rage. He looks around for something to throw at me, but although his hand closes on a cup of water, his coordination is so poor that it bounces off the rail at the foot of the bed and tumbles to the floor. “Fuck off!” he yells. On the monitor beside him, his pulse rate bounds erratically, and Liz hurries to administer a hypospray to calm him down. As the drug hits him, his eyes glaze and he sinks back into the pillows.

She escorts – or possibly shepherds – me to the door, her face a mixture of anger and concern; but she doesn’t say anything till we’re in the corridor outside.

“Doctor East, you need to remember that General Reed is in an extremely fragile physical condition and should not be stressed!”

“I’ve read his most recent reports,” I reply mildly, "and I can assure you, I'll not push him beyond his medical limits. I realize that you’re concerned for his wellbeing, but if we’re to have a constructive relationship then he has to understand that I can’t and I won’t allow him to bully me. It would be bad for me and a lot worse for him. Better to get that established first and then, maybe, we can deal with the reality of the situation as it is.”

“The _reality_ of the situation is that he’s a very sick man!”

“Undoubtedly. But his sickness is on two fronts, and with respect, I have ample experience in treating difficult cases. Maybe not in quite the same league as General Reed, but the principles are the same. If he doesn’t learn to respect me then he will never be willing to listen to me, and if he won’t listen I can’t help him. And Commodore Tucker made it very clear to me that unless the general can be reasoned with, he is far too dangerous to be released.”

She’s on the petite side for a woman and I’m wearing my usual heels – though at a guess I’ll have to reconsider those as a matter of safety if and when Reed is moved to Jupiter Station, which Trip indicated was planned at some point. She has to look up at me, and as I study the lines of strain etched in her face I think that it may be an idea to offer her some counseling too; hers is the face of a woman who’s living on her nerves, and there’s no telling when nerves break, only that someday they will, and the consequences are usually tragic.

“Ever?” she whispers piteously.

“That’s the worst-case scenario.” She doesn’t need any more strain, far from it, so I keep my answer as calm and soothing as I can make it without outright lying. “If we can get the general to cooperate, I’m confident we can make inroads. 

“I don’t expect you to take my side with him,” I add, in case she’s thinking about it. “It would jeopardize his trust in you, and his trust in anyone right now is a valuable asset. I’m perfectly capable of fighting my own battles as they come.”

She pulls a paper handkerchief from her pocket, wipes her eyes and blows her nose. “I’m not sure you could say he ‘trusts’ me at all.”

“He trusted you to administer a hypospray to him without informing him what it was for or asking his permission first,” I point out. “He was perfectly capable of resisting, though his odds of success in his current physical condition are another matter, but he allowed you to use it. Whether you realize it or not, whether _he_ realizes it or not, General Reed has already invested trust in you. There may not be much of it, but it has a foothold, and aside from his medical care, your duty is to cultivate that trust. In the last analysis, it may be the best hope he has.”

She wipes her eyes again. “I’ll do everything I can. But he’s endured so much – you don’t know –.”

I put a hand gently on her shoulder. “The commodore entrusted me with some of the details. Rest assured, I’m here to help him. It’s not going to be easy, on him or on me, but I believe it can be done.”

“Thank you.” She straightens. “Has anyone offered you a coffee since you got here?”

“No, and I could really go for one right now.”

“Please. Come up to the lab and I’ll introduce you to the guys I work with and make you a coffee. We have cookies too.”

“Coffee _and_ cookies, how could I resist?”

Actually I’m not that fond of cookies (the two minutes of pleasure in my mouth aren't worth the two weeks of consequences to my hips and waistline) but as I walk with her to the turbo-lift I’m willing to eat one or two in the cause of team-building. For one thing, I want to get a handle on exactly what is going on between Lieutenant Liz Cutler and General Malcolm Reed, because from her emotional reaction to him it’s far from the standard relationship between patient and nurse; if I’m going to make a success of this I need to understand as much as I can of what makes that formidable man tick, and what connections he’s made with the one human being who demonstrably cares about him.

For another, I want to help her for her own sake, because she seems like a sweet kid and if she’s involved with him in some way she needs all the help she can get. I’m well aware of the manifestations of trauma bonding, and early signs suggest Liz is a classic case. Trip himself said that he was worried about her, but reluctant to forcibly separate them in case she ‘went an’ did somethin’ stupid’. If things really are that bad for her then she needs help, in her own way almost as desperately as Reed himself does. 

For now, however, I have to concede with Trip that forcible separation would be dangerous and potentially damaging for both of them. It will make my job that much more complicated, but I don’t plan on giving up on that account.

I’ve always been up for a challenge.

* * *

**Chapter Thirty-Three**

**Backlash**

_Lieutenant (j.g.) Elizabeth Cutler_

Of course, there are always going to be setbacks.

The only thing more inevitable is that I’m going to find it really hard to deal with them.

As a nurse, I already know of course that trauma to the mind is often far harder to heal than trauma to the body. The horrific abuse that had been carried out on Malcolm’s body was bad enough, but what had been done to his mind and (yes, I’m sure he has one, however well-hidden it may be) his heart was in some ways far worse.

When he first came around in the Bunker, he was so physically and emotionally battered he hadn’t the strength to resist or control anything. As soon as he’s recovered an iota of strength, however, there’s a backlash. A terrific one. And I don't think it's remotely coincidental that it comes hard on the heels of Doctor East's visit, either. Her insistence that we take him out of his room for several hours each day did, in fact, do wonders for his mental acuity, if not his disposition. As his mind has grown sharper and his thinking clearer, his mood has become increasingly foul; and the resulting endless spiteful and vicious behaviors have necessitated precautions which have not only impeded his physical recovery, but in some aspects, caused him to lose the gains he had made.

When I expressed my concerns to Doctor East, her almost indifferent response was to tell me to trust her and trust the process. She explained (as if I didn't know!) that psychotherapy often involves a cycle of setbacks and progress. Because it involves having the patient confronting his trauma, it’s often painful and frightening, but each time he realizes he has survived the confrontation and coped with its psychological effects, he gets a little better. And for the time being, unfortunately, ‘better’ for Malcolm is inevitably going to be ‘worse’ for us. Trapped and powerless, he unleashes all his pent-up rage and spite on anyone in range, and there seems to be no limit to what he’ll do and say to vent his fury.

When I went to Miguel, he told me to trust him, and then he said _he_ trusted Doctor East. When I advised him that I wasn't as trusting as he was and Malcolm wasn't trusting _anybody_ , he gave me the verbal equivalent of a pat on the head and assured me that if he saw any significant problem with Malcolm's physical recovery, he'd address it with Doctor East.

I'm doing the best I can to see to it that Malcolm follows both doctors' orders, but if someone doesn't start listening to me soon – Malcolm, Miguel, or Doctor East, I honestly couldn't care less which one – I may just have to take matters into my own hands. The Project notwithstanding, I know Malcolm better than anyone on his medical team. Having been part of The Project from the start, I’m the only person alive who knows everything he went through and everything that was done to him. Still, as frustrated as I am with the lack of professional respect I'm getting on all fronts, my main concern is for my patient's wellbeing, but nobody seems to realize that _I_ may have some valuable input on that! 

These days, Malcolm hates us all. Me especially, it seems. He won’t talk, he won’t eat, he won’t co-operate, and good Lord, the ways he finds to make things more difficult for me! 

Practically from the moment he discovered he had developed some control over his bladder, he began trying to pee on me when I changed his diaper. It was still necessary for him to wear one because any kind of strain on his abdominal muscles (from trying to sit up from a reclining position to laughing, sneezing, and coughing) would cause leakage, but he seemed to think that it was somehow _my_ fault. 

I have to believe he doesn't yet realize that the bladder training has also helped with his bowel control. I worked in a daycare back in high school, looking after kids between one and three years old from the time I got out of class until their parents came to collect them. I've noticed a look of concentration on Malcolm's face as if he is actually _trying_ either to start the process or void completely. It's what the babies did, even before they were ready for toilet training, as soon as they realized they could relieve that feeling of discomfort by pushing it out. I would happily bring Malcolm a bedpan, or even help him to the toilet if I could trust him not to hurt me, if he would just tell me he needed to go. I refuse to believe that he prefers to soil the bed and roll around in it just to make me have to clean it up. It would be too much of an affront to his dignity for the small payoff of punishing me – but then, this is Malcolm, so there is no telling how he might find a way to rationalize any behavior, no matter how outrageous, if there was an opportunity to make someone else suffer.

Then the restraints had to go back on, for his own safety, after I twice found him crawling on the floor, halfway across the room. The first time he was on his way to the door, with his knees scraped raw from dragging himself along, and the second time I found him reaching for a surgical tray, complete with a selection of incredibly sharp scalpels and scissors, that we kept in the corner of his room in case of emergency. He refused to say what he was thinking either time, but if the former wasn't an escape attempt, I don't know what is, and knowing Malcolm, on the latter occasion he more than likely had murder – probably a slow and painful death for his victim, almost certainly Trip or me – on his mind, though considering the circumstances, suicide might not have been out of the question. Naturally, we have now put the surgical tray out in the hall and fitted the door with a retinal scanning lock, which Malcolm doesn't even have the strength to stand up and look into right now. Trip also made sure Malcolm knew the lock looked for a pulse in the capillaries of the eye as it was scanning, just on the chance that he might try to finish blinding him and make a break for it.

Now, he has to be sedated in order to be physically examined. We had allowed him to sit up for his checkup the first time Miguel visited after the escape attempt, and Malcolm actually kicked him in the face with both feet when he bent to examine the abrasions on his knees to see how they were healing. Though I felt bad for Miguel, I was gratified to see that, while the kick wasn't particularly strong, it was enough to make his nose bleed and his eye swell. At this point, if Miguel tries to examine him with the restraints on, he becomes so upset he vomits on himself, which (although scoring some points, because it makes more work for me) inevitably makes him feel worse about himself, because in his mind, that’s a show of weakness. Never mind the fact that most people get queasy when they're feeling anxious or stressed, and after what he’s been through, his mind and body must both be so stressed that the slightest disturbance is magnified to unbearable levels; he's the Great General Reed, he's supposed to be impervious to the failings of mere mortals.

Worst of all, we’ve had to catheterize him again to keep him from deliberately urinating all over his vagina after we decided to let him go without a diaper because he became too agitated when I covered his penis with the soiled one as I changed him so that he couldn't spray me like a dog marking his territory. I suppose all the writhing and squirming necessary to aim his flow without the use of his hands is good exercise for his lower body, and the fact that he’s deliberately holding his water long enough to get enough pressure to hit his intended target could be interpreted as a positive sign of regaining some vestige of self-determination, but the self-harming aspect of it all and the danger of infection are too serious to allow it to continue. Although urine in the bladder is normally sterile it picks up bacteria from the urethra on the way out and would collect more as it washed across his skin. The bacteria-rich acid soon creates inflammation, a fertile soil for infection.

Despite his vile behavior and the inconveniences of restraints and the catheter, we’ve kept up with his daily visits to the conservatory and the recreation room. He calls these excursions his 'daily airing' and mocks our efforts to do anything that might lift his spirits. As I wheel him down the hall, he shouts as loud as he can manage, cursing me and telling anyone within earshot about the thousand and one ways he used, abused, and humiliated me on _Enterprise_. It's been a long time since anyone has been able to make me feel ashamed of my association with him, and to have Malcolm himself heaping derision upon me for all the times he forced me to be with him and the attempts I made to make the best of the situation really cuts me to the quick. Sometimes, it's all I can manage to get us where we're going without running away in tears and leaving him sitting alone in the corridor. While I can only imagine what he would do if he had the strength, I have no doubt that every idle waking moment he doesn't spend plotting revenge is now spent plotting his escape, which I suppose is a good thing, because it means he can foresee a time when he’s capable of leaving this place under his own steam. If that’s something he can envisage happening, he’ll put in all the work he can to achieve it, and if that means cooperating with us – however resentfully – then that’s what he’ll do.

After he’d wept in my arms, that first day, and been superficially co-operative for a short time after that – even to the point of submitting to the bladder training and learning to use the controller himself (which I know in some ways had to be harder than letting me operate it) – this complete reversal is hard to take. However kind and gentle I am now, he rejects me with every sign of loathing. He hasn’t just reverted to the horror he was aboard _Enterprise_ ; in some ways he’s worse. At least there he was acknowledged as powerful, and widely feared – even, to some degree, by his superiors, and he felt relatively little need to demonstrate what already existed. Here his total powerlessness seems to act on his spirit like a corrosive, and he compensates for it by trying to hurt anything and everyone that comes near him. God alone knows what he says to Doctor East during their interviews. When I bathe him, even though he’s sedated to stop him hurting me you can tell that inside, he‘s almost foaming at the mouth with rage. Afterwards, when the drugs wear off, he swears at me with the filthiest language I’ve ever heard. I stood it for a while, the latest and worst time, and then – I couldn’t help it – I broke down and cried. After all we’ve done to save him, he hates us. Maybe we’d have been kinder to have just left him to die in the explosion, rather than bring him here to keep him a prisoner all over again.

Strangely enough, it’s Trip (normally not the most patient of men) who seems to have the most sympathy for him. Maybe finding out that Kelby really isn’t the useless shit he’d always thought has opened his eyes a little, though I think that his occasional glimpses of Malcolm suffering in Sickbay forced him to think of how it must be to actually live through that horror, and how hard it must be to deal with it now.

After I’ve asked for a meeting to discuss the latest particularly difficult day, culminating in the cruelest outburst to date, he gives my hand a squeeze and reminds me that Malcolm’s far from recovered yet; and that Miguel had accurately predicted that during his recovery his mental state would veer like a weathercock in a high wind, to the extent that there could even be periods when he literally wouldn’t be rational enough to be accountable for his actions.

Well. It’s true, Miguel did say that. But though I want to believe it, a cynical voice inside me whispers that Malcolm knows exactly what was said, and is more than cunning enough to go along with it – to pretend to be far more mentally unstable than he actually is, in order to induce us to underestimate him and torture me. 

The last thing I want is for Trip to have any more reason to press his finger on the button on his cuff, but at the same time I don’t want him to be fooled into believing that all this is just Malcolm’s mind playing tricks. Some of it certainly _may_ be, but I’m not sure _all_ of it is. Trouble is, when I haltingly try to explain this, it looks as if I’m not just claiming to know better than Miguel, but to be lacking in charity towards a man who’s suffered more in the last year and a bit than most of us would care to in a lifetime.

“He’s in a whole world of hurt right now, Liz,” says Trip, sitting opposite me in the dining room while I pour my heart out to him yet again. Most of his time, of course, is spent on Jupiter Station, but he gets daily reports transmitted secretly from the study here in the bunker or delivered personally by Amanda Cole and somehow finds the time every week to visit in person, if only for a few minutes, and receive his share of the abuse, which he takes pretty philosophically. “All these years he’s been strong an’ powerful, and then they turned him into a lab rat. And we _saw_ him that way – saw him helpless, defeated. He knows it an’ he can’t bear it.”

“But none of it was his fault!” I argue, giving up – at least temporarily – on the idea of introducing a little healthy cynicism into Trip’s acceptance of his prisoner’s ‘mental instability’. “And we rescued him – he has another chance now!”

He grins wryly. “You just put your finger right on the problem, Liz. We _rescued_ him _._ If I’d left things as I guess he thought they were – that kickin’ that panel on the biobed would blow him to Kingdom Come – at least I’d have given him a bit of dignity back. As it is, we’ve just dragged him from one hellhole into another _and_ he thinks he’s supposed to feel grateful to us for doin’ it.”

I drag my hand across my eyes, which seem to be leaking again. “I don’t want him to be grateful!”

“Just as well, right now, darlin'.” His mouth quirks again. “If I’m any judge, General Chaos in there will be madder’n a mule chewin’ on bumblebees for a while.”

His smile fades as he looks at my tearful face. “Hey. I’m not sayin’ he won’t calm down, baby girl. Just that it’s gonna take a while. An’ can I give you a little advice?”

I pull a handkerchief from my pocket and blow my nose on it. I seem to be doing that a lot lately. “What?”

“Well, the laws of physics say that every action has an equal an’ opposite reaction. An’ General Disorder may be a case all by himself in some ways, but he obeys the laws of physics just like all the rest of us do. He’s been pulled way out of his whole self over the past year or so, an' now he’s got to go through the reaction. After he’s got that out of his system, you never know, maybe eventually he’ll settle back somewhere close to center.”

“And you think that’s a _good_ thing?” I manage a woeful smile.

“Hell, no!” He rolls his eyes. “He’ll still be a jackass an’ I still wouldn’t trust him further’n I could throw him if I didn’t have that implant sittin’ against his breastbone. But what I wanted to say was that I think you’re makin’ a mistake tryin’ to be nice to him all the time. You’re makin’ him feel you see him as weak, that you’re in a position of power and pettin’ him like he’s a little sick puppy.”

“He _is_ weak! He’s hardly even started his recovery!” I say indignantly. “He’s a patient, what am I supposed to do, slap him around when he won’t behave?”

His look is unreadable. “Maybe he’d find that easier to deal with.”

“I can’t believe you’re seriously suggesting that! Trip Tucker, you think I’m going to hit a _patient?_ Because it might make him _feel better?_ ”

“No, I’m not suggestin’ you hit him. What I’m _suggestin’_ is that you pull back on the milk an’ sugar you’re feedin’ him because right now his digestion can’t handle it. Ever since that day in the shuttlebay he’s been starved of everything he needed to function as a man rather than just a body. He drank air an' ate nails. Now whatever little he ever knew about how to handle kindness has just shut down.

“Maybe not forever. I hope not, because otherwise we’ve wasted all this effort tryin’ to salvage him. But it’ll take time, an' we have to give him that time. An’ meanwhile, if you can’t stomach the thought of not bein’ nice to him at all, you just gotta hope that even though it seems like he hates it, just _maybe_ somethin' somewhere is gettin’ through – that if you keep at it, that part of him that Em an' Alpha froze up may start thawin’ out again.”

I stare at my half-eaten dinner. “Do you think I’m crazy?”

He shakes his head ruefully and chuckles softly. “Liz, I’ve thought that since we were back on _Enterprise_. Doesn’t mean I don’t admire you for it, on one level.”

“Miguel thinks I’m suffering from Stockholm Syndrome.” My fingers are shaking as I grab hold of my mug of coffee and take a big swallow. “Sometimes in the night I think he’s right – I look at everything that’s happened to me, and then I listen to Malcolm cursing me to hell and I can’t help but wonder if all along I’ve been fooling myself that there’s really someone in there worth loving–”

“Hey. Liz.” His hands close over mine, so large that even my fingers disappear from view completely. “I know about Stockholm Syndrome. An’ I’ll admit, I’ve talked to Miguel about it, about whether that’s what it’s been with you all along.

“Right up till that last day he spoke to me, I’d have answered that it _had_ to be that, or else you really were the fool the rest of us took you for. Because I don’t know anyone else on earth who could have taken what you took from that guy, who saw who he was an' what he did, an' still believed there was a scrap of decency in him.

“But that day _happened_. He had the one chance, that one second, to say the most important thing he ever had to say. An' it wasn’t about himself. It was a warnin', a warnin' that what was goin' on had to be stopped – even if it involved killin' him in the process.

“Where that came from, an' what it cost him, I’ll probably never know. But those were the words of a selfless man, even an honorable one – maybe the man you’ve been lovin’ all this time. An' that’s the man I want to reach. If it can be done.”

“We will do it. I swear, we will.” I pull a hand away to grab my handkerchief again. “Thank you.”

“My pleasure.” His PADD’s been squawking intermittently for the past few minutes, and as he releases me he picks it up, glances at it and sighs. “Okay, Eloise, I get it. All I need to get this mess done is a twenty-eight-hour day.”

“You work too hard.”

“I get done what needs to be done. I’m just lucky I have some great staff. You wouldn’t believe how Kelby’s come along just lately – there was me writin’ him off as about as much use as a pogo stick in quicksand, an' then Anna started singin’ his praises every time she put in a report. Now, he's headin' up his own team rebuildin' the Sickbay – actually turnin' it into a first-rate hospital – with input from Jeremy Lucas. Just goes to show, you never can tell.”

I nod. The regulations say I should stand up when he does, but he waves me back down. “Finish your dinner an' take five minutes before you go start another round with General Disorder. Just remember what I said – he’s no sick puppy. He may be sick, real sick, but he’s still a fightin’ pit at heart. You remember that, you’ll get on a whole lot better.”

I hadn’t had much appetite when I sat down, but dinner suddenly seems much more appealing. I finish my ham salad and even help myself to a piece of lemon meringue pie.

 _‘General Disorder’._ Trip’s hilariously disrespectful variants on Malcolm’s name and rank never fail to make me smile.

=/\=

Still, I have to take a fresh grip of my newly determined optimism when I walk into Malcolm's room again.

The tests have all combined to show that although it had taken a battering, his body is still functioning properly. Now all that’s required is for him to learn to use it again and get it back up to strength.

He’s been staring at the ceiling, doggedly ignoring the news feed playing on a monitor by the bed in hope that it might catch his interest. When he hears the door, he glances aside to see who’s come to gloat over him this time.

“Fuck off, bitch!” he spits.

“Fine. If that’s what you want, that’s how we can play it. You’re a spiteful bastard. Happy now?”

He definitely isn’t expecting that. He eyes me warily as I approach the bed.

“You don’t want the restraints.” I start flipping the buckles open, so they drop with a clatter one at a time. “You don’t want your medicine.” I pick the vials off the nightstand and put them in my pocket. “You don’t want your water.” I pick up the jug and, before I can think better of it, pour the contents over his head, leaving him lying there gasping and spluttering. “You want to lie in your own piss and get your body an infection it’s too weak to fight off – fine. You get your catheter out and leave it out, I’m not doing it for you.” There’s a chair opposite the bed and I drop into it, cross my arms and glare at him. 

“Who the fuck’s put a hedgehog in _your_ knickers?” he demands after a moment, when he’s done dashing the water out of his eyes.

“You have, you ungrateful shit!”

He throws back the blanket, drags his legs to the side of the bed and sits up facing me. It would probably be more effective if he didn’t have water dripping off his nose and wasn't having to bear down with both hands to keep himself upright. “You expect me to be _grateful?_ ” he asks through his teeth. “I’m as much your fucking prisoner as I was Phlox’s. Commodore Fucking Tuckah wants me for something, and that’s the only reason I’m alive. Because I’m _useful._ So you’ll have to excuse me if I don’t collapse into a pile of grateful goo for being the object of someone _else’s_ nefarious plans.”

“You think that’s why _I’m_ here?”

“You? I beat the brains out of you years ago. Nothing you do would surprise me.”

At that particular moment, smacking him round the head doesn’t seem such a bad idea. It's a good thing I'm sitting on the other side of the room, where it actually takes a moment's thought and a small amount of effort to get within striking distance, or I might have done it already.

“So you think you’re our prisoner.”

An evil smirk writhes across his face. “Aren’t I?”

“As a matter of fact, no. If you want to leave, be my guest. I’ll drug you, just so you don’t find out where this place is and come back with some of your pet MACOs, drive you out of here and dump you out somewhere sheltered in the wilderness with water, food and a communicator. As soon as you come round you can call whomever you like to come pick you up, and the rest of your life’s up to you.”

He manages to balance himself enough to cross his arms and sneer at me over them. “You’re forgetting the implant your friend the Commodore had stuck in my chest," he says. "All you're _actually_ offering me is a quick and unpleasant death."

"Who do you think put that device in there, Malcolm?" I snap, trying my best to seem mean and smug. 

To be honest, I don't know if telling him this little nugget of truth is a good idea because he might decide I've betrayed him by doing it, and then he'll _never_ trust me. The fact is, it broke my heart to do it, but Corporal Cole, who piloted the shuttle to bring us here, had been very clear on my options. She might have been a MACO, but maybe that just made her more aware of the threat Malcolm could present if he wasn’t controlled, and she wasn’t having any of it. She had a phase pistol at her hip and a phase rifle resting on the console beside her, and I was quite sure by her cold expression that neither of them were set to stun. If he wasn't 'tagged' he wouldn't enter Earth's orbit alive, let alone see the inside of the bunker. 

Still, I’ve started now, so I make myself go on, keeping my voice as hard as I can. "Miguel wasn't available, and it was agreed that we couldn't risk letting you live without it. I had no choice, unless you want to tell me now that you'd rather be dead." 

Actually, Trip had made the decision. The order was communicated to me on a PADD presented by Corporal Cole when I was unexpectedly transported to the cloaked shuttle as Malcolm blew the sickbay. Given their history, any unilateral decision Trip makes about Malcolm will likely be perceived as yet _another_ attempt to control, torture and humiliate him. Presenting it to Malcolm as a group consensus at least leaves the door open for the possibility that Trip is not merely trying to make his life miserable. If he can only accept that Trip wants better for him than just more endless suffering, then maybe there's a chance that the two of them can build some kind of trust.

He doesn’t answer. He couldn't look more stunned if I had bashed him over the head with a club.

"Putting it in was a ten-minute procedure," I add, just in case he might need a little extra convincing. "Taking it out might take five, because I don’t have to worry about the placement."

Words are still evidently beyond him. He gapes at me like a goldfish a couple of times, and I have to suppress a shudder at my memories of seeing him in the tank. I hold my breath, waiting to see how he'll respond, hoping I haven't just destroyed his last chance to ever find _anyone_ he can trust.

It takes him a while to process the information he’s just acquired, but then his face settles back into a scowl. "Remember, I know who was responsible for that ‘accident’ on Jupiter Station," he finally reminds me, once he gets over the surprise of what I have done to him. "Tucker’s not going to let me go, not knowing that. He doesn’t want to spend the rest of his suddenly abbreviated life inside an agony booth.”

“You don’t think he won’t have a computer trace of how the explosion was triggered? He may have prepared it, but you caused it. Deliberately.”

“Prove it. The microswitch – I tripped that by accident when I caught hold of the frame. And how could I possibly have known the circuit was there? I was hardly _compos mentis_ at the time. I sat up – overbalanced – and BOOM!” He grins savagely. “I’m a survivor, love, always was. He’ll have a hell of a time convincing a jury I knew I was signing my own death warrant.”

“‘BOOM!’” I echo ironically, drawing the pen-sized recording device from my pocket. A click of the switch, and his voice comes from it: ‘I knew I was signing my own death warrant.’

“You little _bitch!_ ” His hands drop to the bed again, but stay there, white-knuckled. He’s not strong enough to stand up and kill me.

“The offer’s still there if you want it.” I drop the recording device back into my pocket. “The wilderness – food – water – a communicator. You leave him alone and we’ll leave you alone.”

“And leave _you_ alone?” His voice drips honey but his eyes are terrifying. “You’re sure that’s what you want?”

My mouth is dry. This all takes me back to the horror of the nights in his cabin back on _Enterprise_ , where he was as brutal as a force of Nature. I’ve no doubt at all that if he could get his fingers around my neck right now, as weak as he is he’d find the strength from somewhere to throttle me.

I pull the recording device out of my pocket again and, unscrewing the top, I shake out the power cell. Then I put the two halves down on the shelf behind me before I turn to face him again.

“Now it’s just the two of us, Malcolm,” I say steadily. “And no, I don’t want you to leave me alone. I love you, I love the man who kicked that plate back, the strong, brave man you are behind all the hurt and the anger and the pain of everything that’s been done to you. And I trust you. If that makes me a fool, well, it’s the fool I choose to be. Everything else is up to you.”

I’m not sure my legs are much steadier than his as I walk towards him. I’m walking to my death but I don’t want to live without him.

He watches me come. A cruel little smile twists his mouth. _‘Come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly…’_

I stumble to a halt in front of him.

His right hand lifts and flicks the hair away from the side of my neck. I’m sure he must be able to see the carotid artery thudding there.

“Tucker must want me very badly to have gone to all the trouble he has,” he says softly. “Badly enough to overlook a _tragic accident_ , I wonder?”

“If he believes that,” I answer, my voice hardly more than a croak. “Depends on how good you are at making it look like an accident.”

“Oh, I’m good at arranging ‘accidents’.” His thumb and index fingers run around the base of my throat. "Just ask the Commodore."

Suddenly he’s on his feet. His eyes are almost on a level with mine, and his fingers close.

For an instant. 

Then they open again, and the gray hell I’ve been staring into shuts itself off.

With some lost shadow of his old negligent grace he lowers himself back on to the bed and lies down, while I swallow to make sure my larynx still works.

“I hope Commodore Tucker knows what an able advocate he has,” he says in a silky voice. “Would you mind getting me a drink of water, please? – Oh, and a towel would be nice. I seem to be rather damp all of a sudden. I can’t imagine why.”

There’s a part of me that wants to throw something at him. But I’m alive, and he’s still here – and accepting help. I suppose that means that _for now_ , he’ll co-operate.

‘Give him time’, Trip said. As battered and brutalized as he is, I can’t expect miracles. Right now, I think he’s given me all he can.

I’m prepared to accept it. It’s a victory for us – a tiny victory, but progress is made in tiny steps.

I fetch the cup of water and hand it to him. We both pretend his fingers aren’t shaking as he takes it, and I help him support the weight of it while he drinks. His outburst of the past few minutes has drained him to exhaustion.

I help him get his wet pajamas off and wrap him in the towel, and he sits in the chair beside the bed while I fetch dry clothing and a change of bedding. He even leans over and rubs not very effectually at the mattress with his towel when I strip the sheet off and use some absorbent paper toweling to dry its waterproof surface. Then when the bed’s made up properly again I help him into it, get him comfortable and pull the blanket over him. Then, quietly, I leave.

“Thank you.” I almost don’t hear the whisper as I walk through the door. But I do hear it, and he knows I do. I even tell myself that he’s thanking me for more than making him comfortable for sleep.

Okay – so I’m a dreamer. As if he gives a damn if anyone says they love him!

But still I walk away up the corridor, almost hugging myself. I said it, I said it to his face, and he didn’t throw it back in mine like I was sure he would.

Today, hope feels nearer than it did yesterday.

* * *

**Chapter Thirty-Four**

**Catharsis**

_General Malcolm Reed_

I lie still and wait till I’m quite sure she’s gone, and then I abandon my pretence of sleepiness and turn over, staring at the ceiling. Fortunately she had the wits to turn that fucking television off, or I swear to Lucifer I’d find some way to smash the thing. Just at this moment in time _I. DO. NOT. NEED. SOUND._

I don’t need sound. I don’t need company. I don’t need anything that could possibly distract me while I try desperately to reassemble my shattered thoughts into some kind of order.

She said ... it. She looked into my eyes and she said it.

_Lying, fucking little bitch!_

I sit up, with an effort, and listen to the low sibilance of my own voice hissing filth. As if I’d fall for that – as if she’s stupid enough to even _think_ I’d believe a word of it!

I wanted to kill her. I had my hand around her neck and I don’t think I’ve ever wanted anything more than to close it, and keep pressing, inward and inward, tighter and tighter, throttling the lies out of her.

Out of all the things she could have said, all the cruelties, all the insults, everything I’ve more than deserved... I can hear the _thwack_ of my hand on her face when she wasn’t quite quick enough to obey, the thud of my fist in her ribs when she seemed to be anything other than immediately compliant, the choked whimpers of pain as I worked myself off with her body. I can remember the sick sense of satisfaction as she cowered away from me, too scared even to beg for mercy – not that I’d have given it to her anyway....

_But sometimes she..._

What the fuck had ever made me lick-kiss her in the first place? I must have been more tired than usual. Or drunk. 

Harris had told me to support Archer, so that’s what I did. Didn’t mean I had to like the prick, or enjoy taking his orders. I just obeyed like every lower-ranking wolf obeys, secretly nursing the eager hope that _one day my turn will come._ Now and again after a particularly unpleasant day I’d get out the bourbon, and if I hadn’t bothered eating it would hit me.

Maybe that had been one of those days.

... _So gently..._

Afterwards, when I thought about it, I decided she was just trying to take advantage. And every time I thought about it I told myself that next time she did it I’d slap her into the middle of next week. And every time she did it again I didn’t slap her, and when I woke up again the next morning I didn’t say anything about it, and, luckily for her, neither did she.

_You absolute fucking idiot, Reed!_

_There was a whole different feeling to it_

_...Tenderness?_

‘ _Tenderness!’_ What the _fuck_ am I thinking like this for? Why the _fuck_ am I letting three words get to me like this?

_Liar, liar! You fucking little whore!_

_Half-asleep, satiated. Too tired even to notice she was still in the bed with me. And then, on my lips ... so lightly, so carefully_

_Why?_

_‘I love you’_

_“NO!”_ I scream it aloud. I can’t deal with it, can’t cope with it, can’t bear it. On top of everything else...

Mocking me!

That pretty face, that pretend kindness – and then this!

_‘I love you’_

When – when _they_ pinned me down, at least that was something neither of them said. There were plenty of things they did say, but that wasn’t one of them. At least they spared me that.

_She’s lying._

_...Tenderness_

_As if she cared_

_She must be lying..._

Was she lying with the gentleness and care in her hands, on all those times when she looked after me, back in that hell aboard Jupiter Station? When her treatment of me was so different from that of all the others that I thought of her as _‘The Nice One’_? 

_She abandoned me_

She’d never have done that of her own free will. Whatever I can or can’t believe, that’s not something she would have done. Truth was, she probably wasn’t much freer than I was, and I worked far too many hours with that spiteful Denobulan bastard back on _Enterprise_ to think he didn’t see what was what.

_But that means_

Thankfully, a lot of my memories are vague. But lying here with nothing much else to do, and no cushioning stream of mind-numbing drugs being pumped into me, scenes float to the surface now and again like bubbles of noxious gas rising through a foetid swamp. 

The day they dumped me in the fish tank.

_Bastards. Whoever designed that had better have died in the explosion, because if they didn’t and I ever get my hands on them..._

Luckily for me, these memories too are vague, robbed of the knife-edge of terror. I’ve a secret dread of drowning, and if I hadn’t been pumped up with drugs to the eyeballs I think being dropped into that fucking tank would have given me heart failure.

But that isn’t what niggles at me now, though that among other even less pleasant recollections rolls over me at odd moments. What I’m remembering now is the sight of Liz Cutler, standing to one side, her eyes full of unshed tears as she stared at me in there.

_Love! Who the fuck loves anyone, it’s all self-interest!_

_Self-interest wouldn’t bring her here_

It definitely wouldn’t have her chucking jugs of water over me. 

That definitely wasn’t the brightest thing she ever did. And then to walk straight up to me and look me in the eye and lie!

_‘I trust you’_

_Stupid lying slut_

_I should have killed her while I had the chance_

_‘I love you’_

Lucifer, will someone switch my brain off?

_‘I love you’_

_Lies, lies, she’s lying_

_Like she cared_

_Like I mattered_

_Buying favours, cosying up to me – the conniving little whore!_

_Tenderly_

I turn over again and again. Each time tires me a little more but I can’t stop, I can’t calm down. The sheets are a wreck. My pillow’s halfway to the floor before I realise it, and I make a grab that only just succeeds. The effort of closing my fingers on it when the muscles in them are already weak from exertion makes me groan with humiliation. Lucifer, how long is it going to take me to come back from this?

I _will_ come back. I _will_ recover.

With gritted teeth I promise that whatever Tucker has in mind for me I’ll play along. I’ll stop being naughty; it’ll get me nowhere. I have to remember that bloody thing attached to my sternum, the oaf’s trump card. Right now it’s more than I can possibly manage to believe that he actually _means_ that story he spun about restoring me to power, but if it makes him happy to think I do, well then my obvious course is to nod and smile. This will make him like me, and as long as he likes me he won’t give me a heart attack. 

I believe this is what they call a mutually beneficial relationship.

As for ...

... _her..._

I manage to retrieve the pillow, with a mortifying amount of struggle, and bury my face in it.

_‘I love you’_

Even here, where she’s presumably posted to keep an eye on me, she has other duties. She calls in quite often during the day, though over the last couple of weeks I’ve done my damnedest to make her sod off and leave me alone. Why the fuck can’t she just get the message?

_Ungrateful bastard_

So presumably she’ll be back again soon. I make a mental note to myself to rein in my indignation, because now she’s discovered she can give me unscheduled bed baths with the water-jug and I don’t want her to make a habit of it. Especially not during the times when I’m wired up to those monitors that presumably have electric current running through them, because that might pre-empt Tucker’s new fashion accessory and make my life exceptionally exciting, if spectacularly brief.

_‘I love you’_

If I had the strength to do it I’d pummel something. Despite the enjoyment I derived from putting someone into the Agony Booth when it was finally perfected, for earthing temper there’s nothing quite as satisfying as burying your fist in sentient flesh – though burying a hard cock in it comes a close second.

As the latter thought fleets into my head, a sudden rush of raw, vivid memories gushes in after it – memories I’ve been trying desperately to suppress, but suddenly, without warning, the fragile containment field shatters, and not just horrible flashes of recollection but the whole appalling ordeal crashes through it. All the misery and horror of the past year floods over me at once, the sheer violence of it making my stomach respond by puking up what little I have in there. I hardly notice it; I’m drowning in an anguish that’s worse than any Agony Booth ever invented, because as terrible as the booth was designed to be, this transfixes me through the heart and soul that sometimes even I doubted I still possessed. I throw out my hand feebly as though trying to ward it off, almost wailing, though there’s no-one to see or hear, and there was never anyone to help me, even if I’d deserved it.

_Payback_

The physical pain, though bad enough, was bearable. That wasn’t what brings helpless, unstrung noises from my mouth and shameful tears bursting from my eyes.

_...Em..._

The empty air solidifies, and closes firm fingers around my blindly groping ones. There’s a sensation of movement, I’m gently turned and lifted, and next moment I’m huddled on somebody’s lap like a child, my face is buried in a chest that smells of sandalwood and engine oil and a spare hand is rubbing and stroking gently at the back of my head and shoulders.

Normally, this would be unbearable. Unthinkable. But right now I haven’t the strength left for pride, and with wretched gratitude I hold on as best I can while I sob and wail my heart out.

The exertion finishes me. I hardly have the energy left to co-operate when I’m gently asked to blow my nose and rinse my mouth as part of clean-up operations. My face is wiped and dried like a baby’s arse, and all I can do is submit to the tenderness with a sense of stunned bemusement.

Someone else has come into the room at some point. There have been muted communications not directed at me, and distant sounds of quiet activity.

“Mal, I think what you need now is a good dose of shut-eye,” says the voice that has been murmuring soothing nonsense above my head for the past however-long. “We’ve got your bed all tidied up, you wanna go back in it now?”

“Mhm.” The appalling thought comes to me that if I was a fraction sleepier I’d actually put my thumb in my mouth, but I’m too tired to worry about it.

The bed is indeed re-made, and the new pillow there smells of crisp clean cotton. But it is no longer empty and lonely, and as exhaustion finally overwhelms me I snuggle wearily and gratefully into a pair of arms that hold me gently, careful even now not to press too hard and waken the demons.

The last thing I’m aware of is the lightest, briefest touch of a tongue against my lips, so deft and delicate that I can’t even decide if I’m imagining it.

_‘I love you’_

* * *

**Chapter Thirty-Five**

**Movie Night**

_Commodore Charles Tucker III_

As the heavenly smell of popping corn fills my quarters, I hunker over my footlocker trying to choose between Swedish Fish and Sugar Babies. T'Pol, I know, will want the Crows, and I've already tossed a box of them up on the bed for her. I don't mind one or two of the gummy licorice candies, but if someone told me I had to eat a whole box of them, I think I'd be sick. 

I started these movie nights with T'Pol shortly after I asked her advice on what to do about The Project, and I've been trying to have one once a month, but it doesn't always work out that way. She was never that good at interacting with the human crew back on _Enterprise_ and I can't imagine that those skills have improved any in light of all that I've put her through in the years since. Even if I hadn't been a complete bastard to her most of the time, I'm sure the isolation of being confined to my quarters 24/7 must have caused her social skills to deteriorate. So, in addition to the monthly movie nights, we practice making small talk over our shared meals and discuss – well, anything, really – literature, art, music, current events, you name it. I'm hoping, in time, she'll feel comfortable working among the crew like the other alien conscripts. It's not her _right_ , I know; she _is_ still a slave, but as far as I'm concerned, it's the least she deserves regardless of what the law says.

More importantly, I want her to get comfortable with me, and not just in the sense of letting me rut her like a pig. I'm probably the closest thing to a husband the law will ever allow her to have, and, well, I'm not sure what I want for myself. Either way, I've made it clear that I'm not planning to impose myself on her again, but as I understand it, that _pon farr_ thing she has going can kill her if she's not willing to have me. 

I suppose I _could_ get a Vulcan conscript to help her out, but that would go completely against everything I’ve told her I'm trying to accomplish. Besides, there's no guarantee that she would want him any more than she would me, and now that I think about it, she'd probably resent the hell out of me for pairing her off with a complete stranger of her own kind at a time when she's not capable of controlling herself. Oh, she'd try to tell me resentment is a human emotion that she's incapable of feeling, but I've learned that Vulcans have emotions just like Humans do – maybe even the capacity to love – they just suppress them a hell of a lot better than we do.

At any rate, we've got a few years yet to figure out what we're going to do about her _pon farr_ , but I have other reasons for wanting her to be a little more social. Since barring an accident that kills her before I die, we're probably going to be stuck with each other for the rest of my life – re-gifting a present from the Empress is not a guarantee to get you killed, but it's a risk only a fool would take, and my mama didn't raise no fools – I want someone who will really talk to me, not just make conversation to fill the air. She can never be my equal, the law sees to that, but most of the time, I really do want her to feel like a partner or an advisor or something – or better I should say some _one_ – with a right to her own ideas and opinions. Whether I take her advice is another matter entirely, but if I tried to deny that she's smarter than me, I'd be lying. She might not have had the training and opportunities I've had, but she's as sharp as a tack and could probably achieve anything she wanted, if she was human. I want her to feel free to speak up when it seems appropriate and she feels she has something to contribute. Movie night is a good way to encourage her to voice her opinions and argue with me. Who's right or wrong regarding a film is completely inconsequential in the grander scheme, so she is free to argue long and hard for her position and it doesn't matter one whit if she convinces me or not. I'm hoping that in time, it will get us both comfortable with her doing the same thing on more subjects that do matter.

Of course, the first time we sat on my bed and watched a movie on the monitor on my desk, she was more entertainment than the film, and we really didn't get around to discussing the finer points of theme, visual symbolism, or editing choices. Since Vulcans don't touch food with their hands, she didn't really know what to do with her popcorn and we were nearly halfway through the _Wizard of Oz_ before I could convince her that, as a shared community experience, watching a movie was a sort of ritual and it might be ok to make an exception when it was part of that ritual. When she finally tried scooping a handful of popcorn out of the bowl and putting it in her mouth and chewing it up One. Piece. At. A. Time. And wiping her fingers on a napkin after each piece, even her Vulcan discipline wasn't enough to enable her to fully conceal a look of horror and disgust. 

_Wanting her to actually enjoy the evening, I started doing what we used to do as kids and tossed a kernel of popcorn up into the air to catch it in my mouth. By this point I think she was so far out of her depth that she altogether forgot to try to suppress her open-mouthed expression of shock as she watched me toss and catch five or six pieces in a row._

_"Catchin' flies?" I asked as I turned to face her._

_She closed her mouth so sharply, I heard her teeth click together._

_"You try it."_

_"I – I'm not sure that would be appropriate," she actually stammered._

_"Oh, horseradish!" I grumped back at her, but kept my tone teasing. "Sometimes, context is king, an' in this context, not only is it appropriate, but a casual observer wouldn't even be remotely surprised to see the two of us competing to see who could catch the most pieces in a row."_

_"You must be joking." By now she'd regained some of her Vulcan composure, and I knew I would have to goad her again._

_"Nope, we used to do it all the time when I was a kid," I replied. "Matter of fact, I held the record among my friends - one hundred and thirty-two in a row, I think."_

_"Even given the size of the target, I find that hard to believe," she told me with that one raised eyebrow that often makes me want to start an argument with her, just for fun._

_I couldn't help laughing at that. I was astonished to learn that Vulcans have a real sense of humor, and her comedic little digs are still mostly unexpected._

_"Well, now, it has been a while, an' I will admit that was a one-off," I told her, not responding to the wisecrack about my big mouth because I've already learned that I can't win. "Usually I'd top out around fifty or sixty."_

_"I still find that number difficult to credit," she said drily, and turned back to the movie, comfortably scooping a whole handful of popcorn into her mouth this time, I noticed. "And as you haven't been a child for_ **_decades_ ** _, I'm still unconvinced that the behavior would be considered appropriate now."_

_Her wit is very dry, so I wasn't sure if she was making a crack about my age this time or just stating the facts, but I wasn't going to give her the satisfaction of asking. Instead I challenged her._

_"Do you think you can do better?"_

_The look she turned on me then, completely emotionless and unimpressed, was almost certainly meant to be disparaging, but with those wide-set doe eyes and her jaw still working as she chewed a mouthful of popcorn, she reminded me of nothing so much as a little Jersey heifer contentedly chewing her cud. Coming from farm country – mostly citrus growers, granted, but Daddy and some of the neighbors also kept a few cows around just so they could know exactly what went into the milk their kids were drinking – that's really a damned pretty sight to me, but even I am sophisticated enough to know that there is no way in hell I can say to a woman that she looks like a cow and leave her feeling flattered. T'Pol, being Vulcan, might not have taken offense, but she never would have realized I was trying to compliment her._

_So, I kept that thought to myself and said instead, "I thought Vulcans were supposed to have superior hand-eye co-ordination."_

_"In fact, we do," she told me._

_"Prove it."_

_She gave me a haughty look, tossed a kernel in the air, and caught it._

_And I'll be damned if she didn't do it one hundred and thirty-two more times in a row, beating my record by one!_

Tonight's movie, _Plan 9 from Outer Space,_ falls into the 'so-bad-it's-good' category. In fact, it has been called the worst movie ever made, though I'm not so sure of that – at least _Plan 9_ has a plot, tenuous though it may be, which is a lot more than can be said for most slasher films and some comedies that rely on body humor for cheap laughs, and there is a bit of complexity in the fact that neither the humans nor the aliens are entirely good or bad. What Ed Wood lacked in genius, he more than made up for in enthusiasm, and his love of cinema can be seen in every frame, even if he wasn't any damned good at making movies. _Plan 9,_ like the rest of Wood's work, is also a good example of the B-movie genre of low-budget films meant to play as the bottom half of a double feature. I'm curious to see what T'Pol will think of pre-space-flight humans' ideas about aliens.

Of course, the _Plan 9_ aliens were hardly typical of 20th century science fiction, and I make a mental note to show the old _Twilight Zone_ episode 'To Serve Man' for contrast. The _Plan 9_ aliens just wanted to stop us from weaponizing the sun and destroying the universe. The Kanamits wanted to solve all our problems, from war to pollution to famine and everything in between, and then have us over for dinner, though not in the conventional sense. There's no question in my mind which aliens T'Pol will find more relatable, but I'm just as interested to hear her ideas about what we humans thought of ourselves back in the day.

By the time T'Pol comes out of the shower, I have made up my mind and changed it completely. I'm in the mood for chocolate, and when you're watching a movie, there's no better option for chocolate than Raisinets. They use a pretty good quality of chocolate coating – at least as compared to the chocolate they use in Whoppers and Milk Duds – and since they're made with real raisins, I can almost claim they're good for me.

We settle on my bed, sitting side by side, me with my back against the wall and my legs stretched out in front of me, ankles crossed, and her, with her legs folded up like a pretzel and her back perfectly straight like she sometimes does when she's meditating. As I queue up the movie, I explain a little about Ed Wood, how his big dreams always seemed to fall short and he never managed to raise enough money to fulfil his visions. I tell her about the B-movie genre and the 'so-bad-it's-good' class of cult movies that nobody ever intends to make, and once I feel she has adequate background to understand the movie, I dim the lights.

Then, as Criswell the phony psychic starts his opening monolog ranting that 'future events such as these will affect _you_ in the future,' she oh-so-casually leans back, stretching her legs out in front of her, resting her head against my shoulder, and settling the popcorn bowl in the valley formed by our adjacent thighs. Now, people who know me would have a hard enough time believing that there have been times when I had plenty to say but decided to keep my mouth shut; I can't imagine there's a one of them who wouldn't laugh me out of the room were I to tell them that this simple action on T'Pol's part has left me speechless. Still, here I am, with a very attractive Vulcan female snuggled up beside me, apparently of her own free will, and not only do I not know what to say, but, for the first time since I was about thirteen and a girl who was a friend but not my _girlfriend_ did the same thing in the back of a dark movie house, I don't know what to _do_.

Maybe I've tensed up a bit. Maybe I held my breath and didn't realize it. Maybe T'Pol's Vulcan telepathy is stronger than she's been letting on. Whatever the case may be, she looks up at me then and asks, "Is this not part of the ritual?"

I smile. I swear to God I'm as nervous as I was the first time I asked Melissa Lyles to dance, and I think T'Pol knows it.

"It is," I say, and then, very carefully, as if I'm trying to catch a small, wild bird, I slide an arm around her. When she turns her head and looks at my hand resting on her far shoulder, I say, "If I do anything, anything _at all,_ to make you uncomfortable, I expect you to tell me. Do you understand?"

She nods, and looks back at me. "I do not find it…objectionable," she says.

As I look down into those sweet brown Jersey-cow eyes, the very last thing I ever want to do is hurt her again.

"Computer, pause movie!" I bark across the room. As I sit up, she barely manages to grab the popcorn bowl before it spills onto the bed. Moving forward, I sit sideways on the edge of the bed, one leg drawn up so I can turn to face her.

"That's not good enough anymore," I tell her. "It's not enough that you can… _tolerate_ physical contact with me." Then, as the realization strikes, I say it out loud before I have time to think twice. "I want … I want you to _want_ it. I want you to _welcome_ my touch."

She has shifted to mirror my position, and when she cocks her head and gives me a perplexed look, I can almost see the gears a-turning in her mind. 

"I'm not sayin' that you have to _want_ me," I try to explain. "If you don't, that's fine. I'll leave you alone … or, at least do my best to. But if you're gonna let me touch you, if you're gonna _encourage_ it, it has to be because you really _want_ it. Not just to make me happy. It has to give you pleasure of some kind, too."

"Commodore," she says, and then reaches out to place her small hand over mine where it rests on my knee. "Ch-Charles…"

I may not know how strong her telepathy is, but I know for damned sure that Vulcans aren't usually touchy-feely.

"If that's a calculated gesture to put me at ease," I say, glancing down at her hand, "you can drop it. I meant what I said when I told you before that I'm done forcin' myself on you. The law won't allow me to grant you your freedom, but, in here, between us, I can respect your personal space an' your right to decide what happens to your own body. You can refuse me any time. I won't punish you for rejectin' me."

It takes her a moment to respond, and when she does, it starts with a gentle squeeze of my hand, an action which I am dead certain was deliberately selected for its reassuring effect because there is no way in _hell_ she has the instincts to do something like that.

"Would you please look at me?" she asks gently.

When I do, I know immediately that whatever she says next, it's going to be the absolute truth.

"It _was_ as you say, 'a calculated gesture’," she admits. "Not because I'm scheming, though, or trying to protect myself; but only because physical contact does not come naturally to me. Whenever I _choose_ to touch you, I _have_ to think about what it will mean first, because, not being human, I don't _know,_ and I don't want to mislead you. I did it to reassure you, not because I fear reprisal – I've come to believe what you said about wanting to change things between us – but because I wanted to make you feel better.

"I don't know if I will ever be capable of the sort of affection and desire you would expect from a human female," she continues, and squeezes my hand again when I flinch at the bald admission. "I don't know yet if I like having your arm around me. That's something I'm trying to find out. It may be that I never find it more than acceptable, but the fact that I am Vulcan means that acceptable is often the best there is. 

"You _can_ rely on me to tell you when I find something you are doing _un_ acceptable," she promises. "Can you trust _me_ enough to believe me that when I tell you something is _not_ intolerable, it does not mean I'm simply humouring you to avoid reprisals?"

I scratch my head with my free hand. This is complicated for me. I'm not the kind of guy who doesn't have strong feelings about stuff, and not rejecting something is a far cry from accepting it, and even accepting it is a hell of a lot less enthusiastic than actually welcoming, let alone _wanting_ , it. Usually I like something or I don't. Even if I say I don't give a shit, it usually means that I just don't have the time or the energy to fight for my preference.

"You mean to say you're indifferent?"

"Sometimes I am," she admits. "More often, though, I'm trying to determine what I think about something, or, similar to the night of the explosion, when I told you I've become accustomed to your presence, I find what you're doing preferable to you not doing it."

"Now, darlin', that just sounds like a very complicated way of sayin' you like it."

"Perhaps it is," she admits, inclining her head. "But I'm not trying to be difficult. ‘Liking’ something is an emotional experience, which _is_ very complicated for a Vulcan. Feeling and expressing emotions is unnatural for me. It is much easier for me to logically find something familiar preferable to something unfamiliar."

I have to think about that a minute, but I get what she's saying. 

"So, in other words you need to find a logical reason to accept or reject somethin'," I translate into terms that make sense to me. "Until you do, it can only be tolerable or intolerable, objectionable or unobjectionable. Is that right?"

She starts to nod slowly, and then with more certainty. "Yes," she finally says. "And only when I've made that decision can I decide whether I prefer it or not. I believe that expresses the problem quite well."

"All right then," I say. "From now on, I expect you to tell me when you find somethin' ... objectionable. It's important to me to have you feel comfortable around me. I know some of the things I have done in the past have hurt you…maybe not in the way they’d have hurt a Human woman, but still, they hurt you. I don't want to do that anymore. I need you to tell me when somethin' bothers you so I know to stop."

"You have my word," she says sincerely, and I believe her. 

"Good enough," I say, my heart feeling surprisingly lighter.

I settle back on the bed again, my back against the wall, and she cuddles up beside me. I wrap my arm around her and pull her close and settle the popcorn bowl between us. 

"Computer, lights out, resume the movie," I command, and old Criswell goes back to droning on about our interests in the unknown and mysterious.


	8. 36-40

**Chapter Thirty-Six**

**After the Show**

_T'Pol_

"On the contrary, I _do_ understand you; I simply do not _agree_ with you. There _is_ a difference." What I do not understand is where the disconnect is taking place. The commodore himself told me Ed Wood, the writer, director, and producer of _Plan 9_ was every bit as sincere in his storytelling as Rod Serling, the man responsible for ‘To Serve Man’. The fact that _Plan 9_ was farcically bad in multiple genres – horror, thriller, police procedural, drama, science fiction, and possibly a few others – doesn't change the fact that its tenuous plot was meant to be taken seriously. Unless…

"Do you mean to say, nobody takes it seriously _now_ , and for that reason, it's not considered seditious?"

"Exactly!" he barks, snapping his fingers and pointing at me as if there were others in the room calling out and I was the only one who gave the right answer.

"But then, how did the film survive long enough to achieve the status of a beloved bad movie?" I find it most satisfactory that, despite not being human, I could easily discern between _Plan 9_ as bad science fiction and ‘To Serve Man’ as very good science fiction, and I'm quite certain I could have done so without the commodore having told me beforehand about so-called 'so-bad-they're-good' films.

"These films were made prior to World War III," he explains, and his face takes on that expression he gets when he's still trying to make sense of something for himself. "Not long after World War II, actually. More'n thirty years before the Eugenics Wars, durin' a period of time when the Empire was called the Imperial Regime. It was a lot smaller, rulin' only about sixty per cent of Earth's land mass, an' it was a lot more permissive, too. In fact, dissent wasn't just tolerated, but sometimes, it was even effective."

"Really, in what way?" I've never heard of any period in Earth's history when people were permitted to disagree with the government without some sort of penalty, so it's a surprise to find out that there was ever a time when the government actually listened to protests.

"Well, in the 1950s an' '60s, African Americans in what was then the United States started protestin' for their civil rights," he says. "Prior to that, they had segregation an' anti-miscegenation laws that kept blacks an' whites apart. It was a hold-over from slavery."

"I had heard that humans once enslaved one another," I tell him - a little tentatively, for this is certainly not a subject that is widely discussed, however widely it may be known.

He gives me a scowl and mutters, "Some would say we still do." Rubbing a hand over his face, he continues, "But that's a conversation for another time. In the 1960s an' 70s, especially after the invention of the birth control pill, women began protestin' for equal treatment at work. In the 1980s an' early 90s it was apartheid in South Africa an' equal rights for LGBTQ folks in different places 'round the world."

"And that's when the eugenics wars broke out."

"Right. In 1992," he agrees with a nod. "Somehow, even in the midst of all that, South Africa managed to integrate itself, but it wasn't until the middle of the 21st century that the LGBTQ communities got their full rights."

"When your Third World War began."

"That's right. An' so many governments were so eager to fight that they started draftin' anybody an' everybody, whatever their race, gender, or sexual orientation. An' after the world's various militaries integrated everybody, the rest of the world had no choice but to follow along. Soldiers comin' back from action weren't takin' any shit from anybody about anything, let alone the color of their skin, the equipment they were born with, or the people they chose to love. War did what generations of peaceful protests couldn't. It made us all the same. It was the great equalizer."

His voice has taken on a bitter tone. 

"You sound disappointed," I observe.

"Oh, I think it's great that we eventually decided all Human bein’s were equal. Some countries had been sayin' it for years, centuries even, but it wasn't until the end of World War III that we actually finally _meant_ it. I just think it's a damned shame that we had to almost destroy the planet an' nearly annihilate each other to figure that out."

"Do you think the Empire will ever end the enslavement of aliens?" I ask quietly. The music he put on after the movies is loud enough to mask my question. 

Leaning in close, he whispers, "Not in my lifetime, darlin', an' probably not in yours, but as long as you're mine, I'll allow you as much freedom an' dignity as I can."

I nod. "I know."

Leaning back again, he continues with the discussion of the films. "So, anyway, after World War III, most of the major cities were gone, an' only a few of the autonomous governments remained. The Imperial Regime was by far the strongest, an' through alliances an' conquest it absorbed all the others, an' renamed itself the United Earth Empire. _Plan 9_ was already well-established as somethin' to be laughed at an' enjoyed for bein' just plain awful by then, so it escaped the censors."

"I see. But what about 'To Serve Man', then?" I press. "It hardly presents Humanity in a flattering light."

"Sure, it shows us gullible an' easily manipulated,'' he agrees, "but the whole set-up of the series is to say, 'Imagine…What if…This isn't real, but it could have been.' An' then when your people made first contact, well, it served the Empire's purpose to let it be seen."

"Stories showing aliens as a threat were already embedded in your culture, so there was no resistance to going to war when they became real."

"That's right. Stuff like this had already primed the pump," he agrees. "The Imperial propaganda machine did the rest, an' by the time anyone thought to suggest we could make friends with the aliens, we were conquerin' enemies we'd only ever seen as dots of light in the night sky an' makin' pre-emptive strikes against people who'd never heard of us - some of whom hadn't even developed space travel yet, let alone warp speed."

The sad, bitter tone is back, and although I could fabricate a logical explanation for what I say next, the truth is, I simply do not want him to feel bad. 

"That's quite an accomplishment for a race that only decades earlier was on the verge of self-annihilation."

The long bitter laugh I get in response is not at all what I was expecting. 

"I–I'm sorry. Have I said something wrong?"

"Come on, T'Pol! You've lived among us long enough. Have we _really_ accomplished anything, or have we just taken our local squabbles to the stars? The Empire is expandin' at an unsustainable rate. If we don't stop soon, we won't be able to hold on to what we have. Then, all the planetary governors an' petty despots who are lookin' for more of whatever lights their fires, be it wealth, power, or people to push around, are gonna start tryin' to take it from each other. 

"An' you've seen how it works in the Fleet an' the MACOs. You saw enough of how they treated General Reed, how _I_ treated him. We're no better than we were three hundred years ago, it's just that the stakes are higher."

Once again it troubles me to see him taking on the burden of all the sins of his race, and only partly because it is illogical for him to do so. Mostly, I am disturbed to see how it wounds him. I think sometimes, he feels ashamed not only of what he personally has done, but of every wrong thing his people have done since they discovered fire and moved out of the caves. 

Captain Forrest tried to influence his crew, as much as he could, to be more compassionate, less selfish and vindictive, but the nature of life on a starship is so hectic and transitory, and the turnover rate among the crew is so much higher than it is here on Jupiter Station, that he never had the opportunity to connect with his people and serve as a role model the way Trip has. It is regrettable that Forrest died in the taking of the _Defiant,_ for despite the difference in their respective ranks I believe the commodore would have found a much easier alliance with him than the one he is trying to forge with General Reed.

Then again, had Captain Forrest survived, it is more than likely that none of us would be where we are today. For all the unusual decency there was in the Captain, he lacked the resolve of Commodore Tucker. Captain Forrest did the decent thing whenever it was convenient, but he was not above torturing someone or killing them if it would expedite his agenda. Commodore Tucker doesn't hurt or kill unless it's unavoidable. He isn't trying to coerce the general into joining his cause, he is trying to convincehim to do so, and while any alliance they form might not be _easy,_ it will more likely be _lasting._

"I don't think that you are any more qualified than I am to know what your people were like three hundred years ago," I tell him. "I can only speak to what I have seen for myself, and regardless of what your people may or may not have done to each other and to other species through the centuries, I have seen _you_ do great things."

"The _Defiant_ specs were just…"

"I am not talking about the _Defiant_ ," I insist. "I'm talking about the people who work for you. You trust your department chiefs and they've been allowed to flourish. Hess and Rostov in particular have become real leaders in their own rights, and yet, you're unthreatened by them. Under your tutelage, Commander Kelby is finally working to his potential. Do you think Lieutenant Cutler would have been able to remain functional after Reed left if you hadn't been there to support her?

"Even before the _Defiant_ , you had that compassion in you. You cared for the safety of your team, _all_ of them. You got just as angry when one of the untrained Vulcan conscripts who did little more than scrub the plasma manifolds forgot his radiation badge as you did when I forgot, or when Hess or Rostov or any human on your team did it. 

"As a whole, perhaps Humanity hasn't come very far in the past three centuries, but as an individual, you are well ahead of your time, and you're bringing the people close to you along with you. Humanity will be what it is and do what it does, but _you_ have done extraordinary things. I've noticed most humans will follow a strong leader, and whether you realize it or not, _you_ are a strong leader. If you succeed in turning General Reed to your cause and forming an alliance with him, you may very well become Hero of the Empire a second time."

"It doesn't feel like enough," he says, scowling into distance.

"It's more than enough for one man," I try to assure him, and another illogical impulse urges me to cup his cheek with my hand. He tenses at my touch, but I choose to ignore it. "As a military commander, you are responsible for everyone under your command, but as a man, you're only liable for your own actions. On balance, you have done far more good than evil. You _are_ a good man."

He looks at me "You think so, huh?"

"I _know_ so, and I have known since before the _Defiant_ ." Whatever his failings, he has always been the best Human being I have ever known, and for some reason which I choose not to examine, tonight it is especially important to me that he knows that. "In the initial stages of _pon farr_ , if her designated spouse is not available, a Vulcan female has a few precious hours to select the most appropriate partner for mating before she _must_ copulate with some male, any male, in order to survive. It is our instinct to look for an intelligent, honourable, moral partner, someone who will be able to draw on more than just his physical strength in a conflict and who will stand by his mate in difficult times; and even though there were others of my kind available, I chose you. That choice was instinctive. I had no more control over it than I did the physiological responses that came after. The fact that I could and did use you was merely coincidental. I have long regretted that my actions that day caused you to suffer and that they drove an even greater wedge of mistrust between us."

I lean forward and kiss him, the first time outside of _pon farr_ that I have initiated any deliberately sexual contact between us. He is so surprised he tries to draw back, but, not thinking of any consequences, I slide my hand from his cheek around to the back of his neck so I can hold him in place. It is easier to do than one might expect, for, my greater Vulcan strength notwithstanding, he doesn't try very hard to pull away. 

We sit there, our foreheads pressed together, each breathing the other's air, so close we cannot even look one another in the eye. 

"You don't have to…"

"I may never understand love or affection or desire the way a Human female would, but that doesn't mean I feel nothing for you," I whisper, and as I move my hands to his psi points, he leans into my touch. "Please, let me show you that which I may never have the words to name."

He does not speak his consent to the meld. He doesn't need to. With a single thought, he has banished the need for words between us.

* * *

**Chapter Thirty-Seven**

**Progress Note**

_Doctor Virginia East_

Progress note, Session one.

It is embarrassing to me how ill-prepared I am to deal with Patient X. I have never worked with a patient so badly damaged or so angry, and considering my usual clientele, that is really saying quite something. Apart from a slightly more creative than usual mocking of my surname and a totally inappropriate speculation regarding my relationship to the commander of this facility, he has not told me anything yet, but I am certain this man has been abused in every way we have a name for, and some we do not.

I feel a bit of a ghoul, frankly, for thinking it is a shame I will not be able to publish a paper about what was done to him and the effects it had. I am sure there is much to be learned from his experiences and if and how he recovers from them, but maintaining his confidentiality would be impossible.

It was absolutely necessary on my first visit to impress upon him that I had the strength to stand up to him and would not allow him to manipulate or dictate terms to me, and I have no regrets about that, despite the setbacks in his physical recovery it may have caused. It seems that even that small action on my part was enough to shatter any illusion of free will or hope of self-determination he had begun to build. 

So, naturally, like an ignored child who misbehaves because negative attention is better than no attention at all, he used every means at his disposal to make his caregivers take what I am sure he regarded as actions _against_ him. He has urinated on his caregivers, defecated in his bed and assaulted his physician. He was too heavily sedated during my last two visits to participate in any kind of talk therapy because he got himself so upset knowing I was coming that he made himself ill. After he twice escaped his bed, once in search of a weapon, and once in an attempt to escape, he had to be restrained once again, after which, I am convinced he resorted to self-harming behavior by urinating on his surgically transplanted vagina in what I am sure was an effort to stimulate some sort of infection. He was absolutely making every possible effort to alienate anyone who would try to help him.

He has been like a cornered, wounded, abused animal who cannot help but bite the hand that feeds him because he is so crazed with pain and fear that he does not know the difference between the hand that delivers sustenance, comfort and compassion and the one that deals a blow. Recently, though, I am told his primary caregiver has confessed her affections for him. I can read micro-expressions well enough to know that neither she nor the commander of this facility has given me the whole story. For now, though I can’t imagine any other circumstances where such an intense relationship between a patient and a caregiver would be considered even remotely appropriate for a standard of care, it is sufficient to know that her endearments have forced a catharsis and knocked him out of the mindset of an animal who must fight because he cannot flee. 

In the past week or so, he has calmed down tremendously, resumed his bladder and bowel training, taken his meds without complaint, and even started the tiniest bit of strength training. At the moment, it is as much as he can do to stand up and keep himself upright for a few moments with the help of a Zimmer frame, but after nearly a year of being strapped to a bed or kept floating drugged in a fish-tank, even that is just barely short of a miracle. It seems in his case, progressing by baby steps is still a while off.

At least he is being cooperative.

With everyone except for me.

"Our hour is up, General," I say, rising from the chair where I have been completing my progress note. This is not ordinarily something I would do while in the room with the patient. Usually, I write down just a few key words, and complete the formal write-up in my office later, but if he's not going to speak to me at all, I might as well use the time productively.

"Now that you're getting back on track, I'll be coming by six days a week," I tell him, and the look he shoots me could wither ivy right off a cottage wall. "You might as well start thinking about a plan and what you want to accomplish through counselling. I won't sit here and waste my time again. When I come back tomorrow, we can talk about how I can help you, or I can give you a lecture on neurophysiology. What _you_ do tomorrow is entirely up to you, but Commodore Tucker is paying me well for my services and it would be wrong to take his money for doing nothing.

"You have a pleasant afternoon, sir. I'll see you again tomorrow."

He doesn't even bother to curse at me as I leave. I'm not sure if that's a good sign or a bad one.

* * *

**Chapter Thirty-Eight**

**Duet**

_General Malcolm Reed_

It’s not a good day. My belly hurts, my muscles are aching, my bones are made of spaghetti and I can hardly stand on my own two feet. Worse, I’m still wearing a nappy. A FUCKING NAPPY! 

I’m in the sort of mood where aboard _Enterprise_ I’d normally go round the place like a bloodhound till I found someone, anyone, to throw in the Agony Booth. During the days in the Triad, I’d order a strike on a suspected rebel cell. People dying had a remarkably mollifying effect. 

Here, however, my options are reduced to hissing at Doktor Frankenstein and cursing his Monster, who is running the madhouse in which I am currently incarcerated. 

Unfortunately, Lieutenant Elizabeth Cutler is singularly unimpressed by my temper tantrum. She simply continues to hold the Zimmer frame that has been thoughtfully provided to allow the patient to totter around his cage, sorry I mean bedroom of course, and look expectant. 

My temper’s so foul that I couldn’t give a shit for the fact that she’s shown me nothing but kindness since I woke up here, nor that she’s only trying to help me. I balance as best I can on my unsteady legs, wrap myself up in the blankets and curse viciously under my breath. Fucking nappies and fucking Zimmer frames, what the fuck next? 

A touch on my shoulder. If she’d whacked me with a crowbar at least I could have smacked her one back (eventually), but as it is, I just jerk my head up and glare at her. “Why the fuck do you care, anyway?" 

Instead of retreating as she would if she’d a functioning brain cell in her head, she simply shrugs. "Somebody ought to," she says. "Sometimes I get the impression that nobody ever has." 

Hell’s bells and buckets of blood! I feel my temper straining at the leash. I tell her, just about on the sane side of shrieking it: "I don't need your bloody pity!" 

I thought for sure that would get her out from under my nose. As it is, she slams aside the Zimmer frame and fairly marches up to me, from where she glares up at my chin from all her extremely diminutive height. "Good! Because you're not getting it! I don't pity you, Malcolm, I never have. 

“But I _do_ feel compassion for you." 

Semantics. I really never was any good at them. I shrug myself defensively into my blankets and plump back down on the bed, scoffing. "You say that like there's a difference." 

She’s not buying it. To my colossal indignation, she pulls the blankets off again and grabs me by the nose, presumably to get my attention. "There is. Pity looks at someone who's suffering and says, 'Poor thing, but what can you do?' Then it shrugs and walks away. I know pity. I've endured a lot of it since I met you." 

I’d been about ready to push her away, but at that my storm of anger and self-pity deflates into an emotion I hardly recognise – shame. 

I jerk my head away, regardless of the smart to my ill-used nose, and snatch the blankets back again, wrapping them around me with unsteady hands. I don’t want to look at her any more. My chest gets tight, oddly juxtaposed by a feeling of relief. All this time I’ve been waiting for the other shoe to drop, and now, finally, she’s going to take the revenge she's entitled to. She’s going to tell me I’m an evil bastard who isn’t worth her time or anyone else’s, and then she’ll walk away and leave me to my nappies and my Zimmer frame and the humiliation of falling flat on my face and peeing myself while I’m trying to make it to the bathroom. 

Instead she just keeps talking. "Compassion, on the other hand, looks at someone who is hurting and says, 'Poor thing, how can I help?' Then it rolls up its sleeves and gets to work. You know who taught me that? 

“Martin Roberts." 

Roberts. Pathetic little shit. I hardly knew he existed till the day I heard him offering to help her. Then he was a dead man. 

I remember his face as I told him what happens to traitors. To the _families_ of traitors, after they’re convicted. He had two little sisters. Pretty. Golden-haired. They’d be in big demand, in one of the big Comfort Houses. Hell, I went on, watching him, I’d be amazed if a traitor’s _mother_ didn’t end up in there as well. Catering for the mature clientele, or those who couldn’t pay for the pretty little young ones. 

How careless of me to have left the phase pistol within reach. 

At the time, it meant nothing. _He_ meant nothing. He was a nuisance and I was going to get rid of him, and his untimely end would put me a long step closer towards getting rid of an even bigger nuisance. 

He didn’t stand trial, so he couldn’t be convicted. As he hadn’t been convicted his family would be safe enough, though without his earnings there was always the possibility that one if not both of the pretty little golden-haired sisters might still find themselves flat on their backs in one of the Comfort Houses, catering for the clientele. But his death still provided me with the tool I needed to set Tucker up with the injury that should have blinded him for life.

Now I imagine Liz as one of the pretty little golden-haired sisters. I imagine her sold so that the rest of her family can eat. Roberts thought that fate so dreadful it was worth dying to keep it from the women he cared about, and now, I have the weirdest feeling that he ought to mean something.

I imagine, too, what my fate would have been if I’d succeeded in my plans. There’s not another man I know (or woman either, possibly excepting Liz Cutler) who’d have extrapolated a reason to spare my life from the three words ‘End of Humanity’. I’d have given birth, exactly as planned. Possibly I’d even have survived the experience. Perhaps, if I had, by now I’d be recovered enough to be deemed ready for re-use. I can guarantee you one thing: if things had got that far, I wouldn’t have stopped howling afterwards.

_Ever._

I feel exhausted, confused and despairing – and filled with a misery that is almost more than I can bear. My head is aching, my entire body is aching. I feel ill, guilty, ashamed, sad, scared, a whole thesaurus full of emotions I can’t deal with, and two words slip out before I can stop them, almost before I even know I’m going to say them at all: "I'm sorry."

I don’t specify for what. The truth is, I don’t even know. Maybe I’m just sorry for myself, and if that’s the case well I ought to go and find myself a convenient airlock and be done with it, because I can’t be having with that at any bloody price. 

Nappies, Zimmer frames and maudlin self-pity. For Lucifer’s sake, how are the mighty fallen.

She puts her fingers under my chin and lifts my head up, and then she licks me lightly on the mouth. “I know, Malcolm,” she says gently. “We’ll get there.”

I look down at the blankets. My fingers are trembling as they clutch them around me, but the cold isn’t external; it’s internal, and I’m only just discovering how cruel and all-consuming it is. It’s been my refuge since the day of the… of the windflowers… of the… 

“I’m sorry,” I whisper again.

If my life depended on it – if the alternative was to be hanged, drawn and quartered – I still couldn’t say ‘for what’. I don’t even know. 

Sorry for what I did to Roberts?

Sorry for what I did to Liz?

Sorry for mistaking her compassion for pity, for _yet again_ hurling the one thing of value left in my life back in her face?

Sorry for making an art form of cruelty, for killing for fun, for making myself an object of fear and loathing to everyone in the Empire? For making the whole fucking universe pay for half an hour’s suffering and horror in a secluded corner of the gardens of Nottingham Old Hall, and the school-wide sniggering that followed it?

After a career like mine, how pointless, how pathetic would it be to say ‘I’m sorry I exist’?

There are no words in human language to express my anguish. I let my head fall back and close my eyes. _Back there_ , the loneliness had a language all its own. In that, at least, I can make myself understood.

_“Owooo-ooo-oooooooooooooo…”_

As I draw another deep breath for another howl, I catch movement beside me. In pure reflex I open my eyes.

Liz has dropped to her knees and put her hands on the arms of my chair; at a guess, not presuming to touch me. But her head too has gone back, and even as the start of the next cry bursts from my throat, one does from hers too: lighter and purer, but answering me as the most faithful of echoes.

Wolf answers wolf, and suddenly there is not loneliness, but voice answering voice across the freezing distances.

* * *

**Chapter Thirty-Nine**

**Progress Note 2**

_Doctor Virginia East_

Progress Note. Session Sixteen.

I have to admit, I am impressed, if not surprised, by Patient X's persistence in ignoring me. While I could happily spend my days doing nothing but reading, writing, and talking about the biochemical workings of the human mind, I am not so enamored of my profession as to imagine that others would naturally feel the same. Even though I have deliberately written my patient's name into my lecture notes so that I am sure to use it often when I am speaking in the hope of forcing his attention, I have no doubt he still spends most of the time thinking of other things during our daily lessons on neurophysiology. Still, after nearly three weeks, I would have hoped he'd make at least a superficial effort to communicate with me, if only from the sheer boredom of listening to the droning of my voice.

Once it was determined that he could safely be removed from his quarters for several hours, I ordered daily outings for additional stimulation, whether he was willing or not. Of course, that complicated things a bit for the commander of the facility who had promised Patient X that he would never be forced into anything against his will. After a heated discussion that included myself, the commanding officer, my patient's physician and his primary caregiver – and the patient himself, for that matter, though he refused to participate – it was determined that he could decline to be removed from his room on any given day, provided he could give a satisfactory reason for wanting to stay put. Apart from a diagnosed physical illness, what constitutes a 'satisfactory reason' was left undecided; however, it was determined by majority vote that the patient's primary caregiver would not be allowed to make that determination without consulting the facility commander, the physician, or myself.

As part of what I am told Patient X refers to as his 'daily airing', I have insisted that he be brought to the office which has been allocated for my use. More than a decade of experience has taught me that reluctant 'psych' patients, like pets and small children, are usually better behaved and more cooperative when they are not on their 'home turf'. Moreover, with the exception of those who are so ill they have suffered a permanent psychotic break and lost all touch with reality, this phenomenon holds true whether the individual is a psychiatry patient requiring medical management of neurochemical imbalances to stabilize mood, normalize affect, and maintain acceptable behavior or a psychology patient requiring only talk therapy, behavioral analysis, and training in various coping mechanisms. It also holds true with Patient X, which, if nothing else, tells me he has an adequate grasp of his reduced circumstances, which may, in the long run prove useful. If he can ever, for even a moment, get past his feelings of anger, mistrust, fear and betrayal, and still realize how very vulnerable he is, he might just be able to accept that there are people here who only want to help him, simply because they have not taken advantage of his condition to hurt him.

At least Patient X has taken my advice about one thing, and though it may not be directly pertinent to his mental health, I am sure, in the long run, it will have a beneficial effect. His primary caregiver informs me that he several days ago requested a meeting with her and his physician to plan a physiotherapy regimen to help him regain his former level of fitness. Most significantly, he set the main goals himself and with the assistance of his caregiver and physician, broke each main goal down into a series of sub-goals and benchmarks to create a workable plan for recovery. If nothing else, getting physically stronger and having a degree of control over how he accomplishes that might help him feel psychologically and emotionally stronger and, eventually, brave enough to open up and participate meaningfully in psychotherapy as well.

In the meantime, though I have years of teaching materials at my disposal, I suspect it may be time to change tack with my neurophysiology lectures. 'Insanity' has not been a medical diagnosis for centuries; however, one popular definition, doing the same thing over and over while expecting different results, seems applicable to the current situation. If Patient X can so thoroughly tune me out that he can sit through daily lectures on neurophysiology, a topic I am sure holds little interest for him, then I must do something to catch his attention, however much it galls me to concede this test of wills. I did secure a copy of the physiotherapy plan and the notes indicate both Patient X and his caregiver are strongly resistant to using any form of hydrotherapy. Perhaps - as a last resort - that would be an effective way to force him out of his comfort zone enough to make him talk to me.

When the tone sounds to indicate my patient is at my door, I put aside his case file. It is my habit to review recent notes before each session to help guide the conversation, but in this case, until my patient is willing to converse, it seems a futile exercise. So I press the button that buzzes him in, and while his caregiver positions him in front of my desk, I pull out my notes for the second half of my lecture on neurotransmitter release. As part of my research on General Reed, I discovered he had collaborated with Doctor Phlox (the same doctor who later turned him into an outrageously unethical fertility experiment) on the Agony Booth, which has become an integral, if barbaric, part of both the civilian and military penal systems. I have determined from his notes that he is more than capable of understanding the material I taught in my Introduction to Neurophysiology course for third year undergraduates in pre-med. Because he is a patient, and not a student, I try to tailor the material to his needs by highlighting information that might help him control his mood, affect, and response to stressors.

As she sets the brakes on his wheelchair, I thank Liz, and while I don't miss the comforting hand on his shoulder as she leaves, I choose not to comment. I still believe, as firmly as on the day I met him, that her compassion and the trust he places in her will be the key to his recovery. No one else can as much as speak to him or, in my case at least, even look at him without his defenses coming up. Liz can wheel him about the facility, lay hands on him, even shoot him full of drugs, and most of the time, he tolerates it.

"So, General, have you decided what you want to work on in counselling yet?" I start off today as I have every session for nearly three weeks.

As he has done every session for nearly three weeks, the general folds his arms across his chest in a patently defensive gesture and locks his gaze on the front edge of my desk.

"All right then, Part Two of Transmitter Release it is." I dim the lights and turn on the projector. My lectures come with a slide show, whether he watches it or not.

=/\=

"In conclusion, I hope you can see how GABA could be very useful in…"

"I'm not always angry, you know."

I'll admit it. His words, spoken so softly I'd have missed them in a crowded lecture hall, take me by surprise. Here I was, just an hour ago thinking I'd have to change my methods to get him to open up, and now he's done it. Not much, but it's not immodest to say I am good at my job, good enough that if I can get just one fingernail into a crack, I can work with a patient; and he may not realize it, but he has given me an entire handhold. 

"…controlling your anxiety."

I'm also seasoned enough as both a lecturer and a therapist to not allow him to trip me up. Every moment I've spent with him for the past three weeks has felt like a test, and even though he hasn't said a word to me up to this point, I feel like showing my surprise would be regarded as a failure on my part. I flip to the next slide, which shows the copyright information for the presentation, so that he knows the lecture really was over. Allowing him to interrupt me would be an even worse failure than showing surprise because I assured him early on that I would not be manipulated.

"That doesn't surprise me, Malcolm," I respond as I turn off the projector and turn on the lights.

If he is surprised by my lack of surprise or by my use of his given name, the only evidence of it is how quickly his gaze snaps from the edge of my desk to my face.

"Easily said, harder to prove," he counters smugly, and why not? After all, how does one prove or disprove an emotion, especially an emotion one has made a sincere effort to conceal?

Easily enough, by proving there is no reason for one to experience said emotion.

"Not so difficult to prove, really," I say casually. "Anger triggers the fight or flight response. It releases adrenaline and cortisol which raise the blood pressure, increase heart and respiration rates, elevate body temperature, and stimulate perspiration. Anger requires a tremendous amount of energy to sustain. Energy you don't have.

"Not so long ago, when you were in peak condition, you might have been able to hang on to a really good rage for days, but not now. So, what do you want to do about it?"

"There's not a bloody lot I _can_ do about it, is there?" he mutters. 

His arms are folded again, and he is back to staring at the front edge of my desk; and I've had just about enough of that.

"Bullshit!" I snap, and he's looking me in the eye again, his arms are down on the armrests, and his hands have taken a white-knuckle grip on the chair. "Don't think for one minute you can come in here and humor me by just picking at a scab. When there's a festering wound beneath it, we're going to drain it. 

"Now, anger is a very useful tool for masking other emotions. Fear, anxiety, depression, loneliness, jealousy, alienation, helplessness, hopelessness, ignorance, inadequacy, frustration, grief, hurt, guilt, embarrassment and shame," a tiny crinkle appears between his brows on 'shame' but I don't comment, "and probably a score or more of other emotions can all easily manifest as anger. So, I ask again, what do you want to do about it?"

"I want to be left alone!" he sulks, and crosses his arms and returns his gaze to the edge of my desk once again.

"That's bullshit too," I confront him, coming around the desk to crouch in front of him, at which point my proximity presents such a threat to him that he grabs the arms of his chair again, probably because he has to grab something and he doesn’t have a weapon available. "And I think you know it because you wouldn't have mentioned it if you didn't want to _do_ something about it. 

"Being angry about everything used to work for you because you were in a position to punish anyone who pissed you off," I explain. "But circumstances have changed and now you have to actually _cope_ with what you're feeling. So, for the third time, I ask, what do you want to _do_ about it?"

" _I don't know_!" 

We're inches apart, and still, he won't look me in the eye. His grip on the armrests of his chair is so tight the leather is creaking, and his entire body is taut and quivering like a bowstring that's been held at the point of release for too long while the archer tries to aim his shot.

"Yes, you do know, Malcolm," I insist urgently. If he was physically stronger I probably wouldn't risk such close proximity and he won’t be this weak for long, so there is no way in fucking hell I'm wasting this opportunity. "Tell me what you're feeling, _right now_!"

"I'm bloody pissed off at you!" he snarls, and like the archer who has bled away too much of his energy aiming, he misses the mark.

"No you're not!" I contradict him.

"What business have you getting in my face like this?"

"You're _using_ anger, right now, Malcolm, not _feeling_ it!"

"Don't tell _me_ what I'm feeling!"

"I'm telling you what you're _not_ feeling!" This is not splitting hairs. Far from it, I'm pressing him now for the kind of truth he might not have admitted since he was a very small boy, if he even admitted it then. " _You_ tell me what you're feeling! What you're _really_ feeling!"

He draws in a ragged breath, almost a sob, and panting, he tells me, "You're too close! I can't breathe! Get away!"

"Not yet, Malcolm," I say as soothingly as I can manage. Now that I've stirred up the emotional cesspit inside of him, he doesn't need me to keep those waters circulating. "First, I need you to give that feeling a name."

"Please," he gasps, but I stay right there in front of him. I may never have another chance like this, so I have to push him harder now than I might do a more cooperative patient.

"Trapped!" he admits, his voice barely more than a whisper, and I'm out of his space before he can repeat, "I feel trapped!"

As he catches his breath, I pour him a glass of water and drop a straw into it. When he’s breathing normally again I hand the drink to him. He eyes the straw suspiciously, but seems to know why it's there as he takes the glass in a trembling hand and clutches it to his chest so he can sip the water rather than wear it.

I wait quietly while he drinks his fill. He doesn't seem the least bit rushed, and I'm in no hurry. I've been paid for three weeks to do basically nothing, for that, if for no other reason, I owe him all the extra time he needs to gather himself now.

When the water is almost gone, he hands the glass back to me with a surprisingly well-mannered 'Thank you.' Then he fixes me with that glare that I've seen so many times on television and growls dangerously, "Don’t you _ever_ fucking _do that_ to me _again_."

I'd be lying to deny that I felt the force of that glare, though in my defense, I suspect it's more of a reaction to who he was and who he may be again one day than to who he is now. The man in front of me right now would find it difficult to muster all at once the speed, strength, and coordination to smash a spider.

"I'm sorry, Malcolm," I begin apologetically, "but I'm going to fucking well do whatever the hell I find fucking necessary to help you."

He's either too tired to hide his surprise at my language or he doesn't even try. If he were another patient, I might even laugh at the wide eyes and downturned mouth that make him look slightly frog-like when he draws back from me, but I am too keenly aware of how hypersensitive he is to any sign of what he might interpret as disrespect to find it amusing on him.

"Look, psychotherapy is _hard_ for trauma patients. Actually, it's fucking brutal. It's frightening. It's frustrating. It's grueling. It's demanding. It's exhausting. Frankly, it's a bitch!"

Normally, I don't curse during a session. Ever. My mother heard me cussing once. She didn't punish me for it. Instead she told me, "Ginny, profanity is the blunt instrument of a feeble mind. I want you to learn to make your point with a scalpel, not a machete. I don't think I've ever heard a thing worth saying that couldn't be said without cursing."

I was young enough at the time that I had to look up the meanings of _profanity, blunt, feeble,_ **and** _scalpel_ – I knew _machete_ because my father had one he used to clear brush – but once I understood what Mama was saying, I wanted that, too. It wasn't until years later that I realized how very clever she had been to turn that moment into an object lesson on the spot.

But Mama never had to account for the efficacy of the occasional random profane tirade when dealing with a hard man who's lived a hard life and thrived on the sheer, wanton brutality of it, who now has to learn to cope with being vulnerable.

"In fact," I tell Malcolm, "there are only two reasons I know of that trauma patients would ever put themselves through such hell."

"And they are?" The look he gives me is skeptical, but he's actively listening, and that's more than I've got from him in the past three weeks.

It makes me wonder what Mama would say.

"It's their last hope to get better, and it fucking works." 

He sits with his lips pressed into a firm line; the only thing he hasn't done is mime zipping them shut. He's clearly not willing to engage again until I convince him. 

"I think it can work for you, Malcolm, if you're willing to work with me. But I have to be honest, you're going to have to deal with a lot of shit. I say that because the point of psychotherapy is to get a patient to _remember_ the trauma and deal with it without _reliving_ it, and I suspect you've experienced a lot of trauma in your life."

I don't think he's aware of the slight nod as he scoffs, "I don't see how talking about my feelings is going to make _anything_ any better."

"Oh, unless you bring them up, we probably won't talk about _your_ feelings again for _weeks_ ," I say, and get another bemused look from him. "You need to get comfortable _talking_ before we can even _think_ about talking about something as personal as your feelings."

He visibly relaxes a little bit at that.

"Look, I can't make any guarantees about how successful we'll be. A lot of that will depend on how well I can earn your trust and how willing you are to share, but I can make you three promises right now. First, I'll never leave you hanging; whatever emotions we stir up, I will help you process them. I won't let you leave a session feeling agitated and at loose ends. Second, nothing you say to me will ever leave the office. I do keep notes, but they do not leave the office, and they're anonymous. You are Patient X, Commodore Tucker is The Commander of this Facility, Doctor Salazar is The Physician, and Liz is The Caregiver."

He smiles slightly. From him, it’s a highly significant indicator and I can't let it go. "The name I chose for Liz seems to please you. Care to tell me why?"

His smile drops away, but he answers directly. "It's more comprehensive than 'Nurse' isn't it?"

"I suppose so. What about it?"

"I think it suits her, that's all."

I don't think he has any idea how much information he's just given me, but I let it go for now. "My final promise is that I won't give up on you as long as you don't give up on me. It's ok to tell me you need to slow down or that you want to change the subject, but you have to keep trying, and when you're stalling, you have to let me poke at you every now and then."

He laughs, softly and with bitterness. "You talk as if I’ve already agreed to accept your services."

"You have," I point out. " _You_ started this conversation."

He smirks and shakes his head, but it's a gesture of resignation, not denial. "Oh, bloody hell," he mutters under his breath. "All right."

"Now, before you go, I'd like an answer to my original question," I say, applying only gentle pressure. "You can't be angry all the time anymore. So, what do you want to do about it?"

He closes his eyes briefly, and I can tell that the admission, when he makes it, pains him deeply. "I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m never going to get anywhere without accepting help. I can't afford to alienate the people who are trying to help me. I've told myself more than once that I would co-operate. That I would accept help, maybe even graciously. That I would _behave_ myself. But I can't seem to do it for any length of time." 

It's hard not to chuckle at the way he says _'behave myself'_ with almost the same tone of disgust that a young boy might say _'eat my vegetables',_ but I daren't laugh. Right now, the only vestige of his old self that he has is his pride, and if he gets even the faintest hint of an idea that I might possibly be mocking him, well, I won't even get the chance to explain myself. He'll shut the door on me forever, though it could very well mean his life. This is a man who truly would sooner die than be humiliated yet again.

"I want to pack in being a bastard to the people who are trying to help me every time something doesn't go the way I want."

"All right, that's a good goal to have," I encourage him. "You're going to start working on it tonight."

"I…what? Our session is almost over!" He glances at the clock. "It's past over."

"I know. I'm giving you homework."

He laughs aloud at this. "Do you have any idea how long it is since I've been in school?"

"It's not that kind of homework," I assure him with a shake of my head. "There's no memorization or computation, and only a very little composition. Do you remember what I said about other emotions masquerading as anger?"

He gives me a nod. "Yes."

I pull out a pen and a paper tablet and say, "I'm going to give these to Liz." I keep talking over his panicked look, hoping to pre-empt any objection. "You can tell her anything you want or nothing at all. I'm just going to tell her you have an assignment for me and it would be good physiotherapy for your fine motor control."

Another nod. 

"You're going to write me a list of at least ten of those emotions that you, _personally_ , at some point in your life, have actually experienced and covered with anger, and I want you to be able to name specifically the incident that caused each of the emotions on your list. I might never ask about any of them. I might eventually ask about every single one. If I do ask about any of them, you'll be free to tell me if you're not comfortable talking about it. The important thing I'm looking for is that you're _thinking_ about it. I want you to learn to identify the situations that cause particular emotions. Once you can do that reliably, we'll start working on ways to manage your behavioral responses to those emotions.

"You see, when you say you need to learn to quit being a bastard, what you really mean is you need to learn to cope with unpleasant emotions without covering them with anger and lashing out."

"But you told me we weren't going to talk about my feelings for quite some time," he objects, probably not realizing how much of his anxiety he’s giving away.

"I did say that didn't I?" When he nods a third time, I smile back and say, "Well, I guess you're just going to have to trust me on that. Look at it as a small step in the right direction. Once you learn to trust that I won't _push_ you into anything you aren't ready for, you'll be more willing to let me _lead_ you through the painful episodes in your past in such a way that you won't have to _experience_ them all over again every time you _remember_ them. 

"Now, are you ready to wrap it up for the day, or was there something else?"

"Bloody hell, woman! Don't you think I've had enough?"

"I think you've had a very good day, today," I tell him. "And I think you know that without anyone having to tell you."

When Liz comes in to collect him and I hand her the tablet and pen, she looks avidly from me to Malcolm and back again. I can see his anxiety from across the room as she asks what the materials are for, but I tell her only what I said I would: that he has something to do for me that would make for good fine motor practice. "If he asks you not to look at it, you should respect his privacy," I add for good measure.

It's clear from his expression that my patient doesn't know what to think. So I crouch down to be in his eye level and tell him, "I know I have to earn your trust. Give me a chance, and I will."

He gives me another unexpectedly polite ‘Thank you’, and then Liz wheels him away. As soon as the door closes behind them, I literally dance, albeit not very gracefully, for joy.

* * *

**Chapter Forty**

**Session Two**

_Doctor Virginia East_

In my mind I have begun to renumber my sessions with Malcolm. Everything prior to yesterday was preliminary ground work. Yesterday, session sixteen – which I’m renumbering Session One, because it was the first time I’d actually managed to communicate with him in any way – was goal-setting. Today, and probably for weeks to come, we will work on trust-building.

Liz parks him up in front of my desk and leaves with a smile for me and an encouraging squeeze on Malcolm's shoulder. Once she is gone, I make a little small talk, asking about his physiotherapy, mentioning something I heard on the news. Carefully I avoid any questions about his feelings because I told him we wouldn't be talking about them for a while. He responds readily enough, even showing some enthusiasm about being able to take a few more steps with the Zimmer frame than he managed yesterday. It seems he's trying, however awkwardly, to actively participate in his therapy. Honestly, it's more than I expected after yesterday's breakthrough, so, especially considering his reputation, I’m a little suspicious of his sincerity.

Nevertheless, I keep my doubts to myself and take his responses at face value. People have a way of meeting the expectations you set for them. If I expect him to be duplicitous and conniving, he almost certainly will be; if I expect him to engage sincerely in therapy and open up a little bit, it's possible, eventually, he just might. In the meantime, I must remind myself constantly of what he’s been through and what it has done to him, and not expect progress to be swift or without setbacks.

"So did you make that list?" I ask casually. I'm expecting one of two things, based on what I've read in his file. Either he decided against it and has nothing for me, or he went over the top. When – after a momentary hesitation – he hands me the paper, I don't speculate on whether his hand is shaking from fatigue after his physiotherapy or anxiety now that he's in session with me. It could be either or both, and it’s highly unlikely he’d tell me if I asked.

There are thirty words on the page. I asked for 'at least ten' thinking that would be a stretch for him. So, it seems for today I'm going to get Malcolm Reed, the overachiever.

I read the list aloud, "Fear, depression, loneliness, jealousy, ignorance, inadequacy, grief, hurt, guilt, embarrassment, shame, anxiety, alienation, frustration, helplessness, hopelessness." I stop after the first fifteen. "You have quite a good memory. I think I listed every one of those words yesterday."

"I know you did," he says confidently. "In that exact order. Having a good memory can save your life in my line of work. I used to do regular mental exercises to maintain and improve my ability to memorise things quickly. A list of words is no challenge even now." I just nod, wondering what he'll do if I don't take up the conversation right away. It takes more than five but less than ten seconds for him to add, with only an edge of irony, "It's nice, actually, to know there's something about me that still works properly."

He tosses it out there casually, like it's nothing more than small talk, but I know better. Such breathtaking honesty so soon can only mean one of two things. Either he's decided to throw himself into this little adventure wholeheartedly in a desperate attempt to get a grip so he can somehow rebuild his life, or he's throwing me a bone and using this insignificant scrap of information to humor me so that I'll tell Trip he's genuinely trying.

I decide to take the statement at face value. It doesn't matter either way. If he's sincere, praising him for his courage and honesty could well be seen as condescending – other patients might need it, but this is a man who would sooner die than be coddled. If he's shining me on, it won't last long. What I have planned for him requires too much mental and emotional work for anyone to sustain the effort as a pretence. As long as he participates, he _will_ make progress, whether he means it or not.

"I'm glad that you found that out, Malcolm, and I hope it will be just one of many things you discover as we work together that helps you feel more like yourself."

He gives me a vaguely sinister smile then and asks, "Are you sure that's what you want, Doctor? I'd wager most people would rather I be almost anybody _other_ than myself."

"Oh, I'm not talking about _General Reed_ , Malcolm. I'm talking about Malcolm, the man, or maybe he was only ever a boy, who could be…" I glance at his list and read off a few of _his_ words. "…vulnerable, wounded, amused, or aroused."

He winces at that last word as if I have unexpectedly discovered more of him than he wished to show me, but frankly, from what I've heard about what was done to him, I'd be more surprised if arousal didn't send him into a full-blown panic attack.

"You do realize, don't you, that the general is just a façade of a man, Malcolm? He's the armor you put on when you decided that no one was ever going to hurt you again. You grew into him and he's grown fast to you and become like a second skin or a hard shell. _General Reed_ is not really you any more than _Doctor East_ is really me."

"Well, then, who the fuck are you, and who in bloody hell do you think I am?"

"I'm Ginny," I tell him, and decide spontaneously to open up a little more than I would with most patients. I'm well aware anything I tell him can _and will_ be used against me if he ever decides he has a need. So I take care not to mention anyone or anything he couldn't find out by having me tailed or simply checking my records. "I'm a country girl. I like horses and gardening, which is convenient because the horses produce a lot of fertilizer for the gardening. I'm just nuts for ripe tomatoes still warm from the sunshine; crisp, cold cucumbers straight from the 'fridge; and fresh berries, cherries, and grapes. Bosom-heaving, bodice-ripping historical romances that stop just an adverb or two short of pornographic are my guilty pleasure. I am genetically my mother's daughter and a daddy's girl by disposition, which is why you'll never hear me say no to dessert; but you'll find me in the gym three days a week working on my thighs and butt."

"Mummy has a large arse, does she?" The smirk that accompanies his question doesn't seem nasty. Maybe he's amused by my candor. Maybe he's trying to trip me up by playing innocent and being deliberately offensive. 

Maybe I need to brush up on my chess game. Most of my patients try both deceiving and offending me at some point, but rarely do they have a go at both at once. I don't know if I've ever encountered anyone as clever and as subtle as this man. For one dreadful moment, I worry that he's still just messing with me, and will continue to do so for as long as he pleases, because I'm simply not perceptive enough to know the difference with him. 

Then I decide that he can only manipulate me with my permission. If I forget about his intentions and treat him based on observable behavior and the things he admits to me, he'll either get better or he won't, depending on the sincerity of _his_ efforts. And if he's not getting better, I know enough of his history to crack his calm façade like an egg.

My confidence returns as quickly as it left me. He might get something over on me now and again, but he can't fool me in the long run.

Whether his comment was meant as an insult to my mother is irrelevant. He's never met her, so he's in no position to know if she's sensitive about the size of her derriere. And taking offense at an off-the-cuff remark never won anybody any friends, so I lean into it instead. If he ever decides to use the people I love against me, I imagine Trip would be his first target simply due to ease of access, and my parents would naturally come next. Still, I have to be careful not to give him anything too personal about them, certainly nothing they wouldn’t willingly confess. Fortunately, my mother and father both have broad shoulders, the hide of a rhinoceros, and a self-deprecating sense of humor.

Slapping my outer thighs, I say, "Saddle bags, Mama calls them. Anything that tastes good enough to be bad for you settles on me right there. But she does call Daddy a jackass sometimes, and he's almost as tall as Commodore Tucker, so I guess the answer is yes, she has a big ass, any way you look at it!"

The quip gets me a look of surprise and an appreciative if almost reluctant chuckle, but we're straying off course, and I need to get us back on-topic before he can lead us farther away.

"Now, who do I think you are? Well, it's not my place to say."

"That's not a very graceful evasion, Doctor," he observes, narrowing his eyes slightly. Now he’s being honest with me, he’s alert for any failure in me to reciprocate.

"I'm not trying to be graceful or evasive, Malcolm," I tell him frankly. "I think you knew who you _were_ . You might not have _liked_ that guy all the time, but you knew him up and down, backwards and forwards, inside and out and every which way; and that was comfortable. It was safe because _General Reed_ was predictable to you. People around him might not have had a clue what he was up to ninety percent of the time, but that's only because you're so damned smart. If life's a game of chess, you were about six moves ahead of the next best player, and you knew what he would do, and what you would do, what everybody else around you would do, which pawn was about to be sacrificed, and which one was about to take one of your opponent’s pieces off the board, before said opponent even formed an intent to move."

I can tell from his expression that I've hit the mark. Until he was taken down by the people he trusted the most he was very secure in himself and had a lot of confidence, but he held no illusions about his own faults.

"But you're not that guy right now, Malcolm. You can't be the old comfortable General Reed who made you feel safe, because you can't _do_ all the things he would have done." He opens his mouth to protest, but I cut him off. "Maybe someday, but not right now.

"In the meantime, it's not my job to tell you who you are or how to be. You get to decide that for yourself. My job is to help you find opportunities and experiences that will help you figure that out and to suggest exercises and activities that will help you achieve the goals you set for yourself."

He's looking at me warily, and well he should, because I've deliberately chosen an exercise I know he's really going to hate. "To that end, I think it's time we get started, don't you?"

"I…suppose so," he concedes reluctantly.

"Excellent. We're going to try something easy first."

I start by teaching him 4-7-8 breathing. It will help him sleep, calm his anxiety, curb his temper, even shorten his recovery time after his physiotherapy because it increases the amount of oxygen that's drawn into the body. Of course he thinks it's ridiculous. Most people do, until they actually put it into practice. I plan to make sure he gets a chance to practice today.


	9. 41-45

**Chapter Forty-One**

**Coping**

_Doctor Virginia East_

"Very good, Malcolm," I say after he's been breathing properly for about three minutes without interruption. "Now, do you think you have enough gas in the tank to move yourself out of your wheelchair and into a regular one?"

He frowns, but he doesn't open his eyes, which I think is a testament to the effectiveness of the 4-7-8 breathing technique. It had taken me nearly five minutes to convince him simply to close his eyes as part of the exercise. It's no small thing for someone that wary to be able to carry on a conversation without actually seeing the other party, and I'm sure Malcolm is more aware than most people just how much information is conveyed by body language. I wouldn't go so far as to say he trusts me, not even a little bit right now, but I do think the breathing has made him calm enough for his rational brain to decide that the simple act of talking isn't necessarily a threat.

"I suppose I could, why?"

"I just think getting out of the wheelchair as much as possible will help you feel less like an invalid," I tell him, and it's half the truth. He'll learn the other half soon enough. "And feeling less like an invalid will make you feel more confident and better able to cope with whatever comes your way." 

He doesn't open his eyes at once, but his thoughtful expression tells me he is actually considering my suggestion. After several moments, he nods and concedes, "That would seem like a reasonable assumption."

"So are you willing to try it?"

"I suppose so," he agrees, however reluctantly. At some point he has opened his eyes, but he doesn't seem particularly suspicious. It's just what you do when you're having a conversation; you look the other party in the eye.

"Do you mind if I push your chair?"

Now his shields come up, his eyes narrow and his mouth gets tight. "Why?"

"Because I have a particular seat in mind for you," I tell him, and he looks rightfully uneasy. The chair I have chosen for him is all chrome and black leather. It looks like something out of a high-end urban design catalog, and sits like something out of Torquemada's parlor. Apart from the deceptively poor design – it looks sleek and elegant and expensive, but the angle at which the seat slopes creates the feeling of one's rear end sliding out the back and forces one to constantly push the upper body against the backrest to avoid getting stuck folded in half like a pocketknife with one's knees against one's chest and one's ass hanging out – I have also enlisted an engineer to bend the frame in such a way that too much pressure on the backrest causes it to rock backward, making one feel the need to lurch forward and scrabble for purchase to avoid toppling over and cracking one's head on the floor. Of course, no one can _really_ get stuck and it won't _actually_ topple (I'd never have a piece of dangerous furniture in my office), but that's impossible to know when one is in freefall.

His eyes roam the room until he spots it, off in the corner, facing the junction of two walls, and his eyebrows climb. "You're going to sit me in the corner like an errant schoolboy?" His tone is scathing, his upper-class English accent so pronounced you could slice bread with it.

"You could choose to see it that way," I admit, "but if you consent to try it, I think you’ll find it accomplishes a lot more than just giving you time for a good, long think about the latest naughty thing you've done."

Looking at me suspiciously he asks, "What 'naughty thing' is that?"

He knows as well as I do that if I start making a list we'll never get to move on; but I honestly don't think he's stalling. He's just misunderstood the purpose of the exercise, which isn't surprising as most people have never been sat in the corner for any reason other than discipline.

"There is no 'naughty thing,' Malcolm," I assure him. "I won't judge you for your past behavior, but in time, once you're comfortable talking with me, I will try to help you understand it and use that knowledge to change your future actions, _if_ you want to. I just mentioned it because that's why parents and teachers put children in corners, to contemplate the effects of their misbehavior on the people around them. And honestly, I don't think you'll get that far today. In fact, if you do, I'll have to completely re-evaluate my plans for your treatment. This exercise has an entirely different purpose."

"And what _exactly_ is that?"

He hates giving away his anxiety. When he was in power – and probably for a long, long while before that – any sign of it would have been an indicator of weakness he couldn’t afford, so he must have perfected that front of perfect, cold arrogance we saw so often on the television. Even now, when his defences have been brutally broken apart by what he’s been put through, he’s so good at hiding it that I guess anyone less highly trained and experienced than I am would find it very hard to detect; but I can tell now he _is_ getting anxious, and I'm fine with that for now. I elect not to answer his question directly – he can make his own inferences.

"Look, I told you yesterday that counselling can be brutal," I remind him. "I understand what I'm asking you to do, and I get that you're frightened. That's ok. I know it's a big ask, but I think you can handle it."

I'm not sure he has quite worked out yet exactly what I intend to do, and I have no intention of telling him. I would not consider today's session a complete failure even if he went into a full-blown panic attack, if he crumpled into a sobbing heap, or if he hauled off and tried to slug me, or any combination of the three. 

"What makes you think I'm frightened?" he asks, with an edge to his voice – yep, he really does hate to be read that well – and I have to wonder if he really doesn't recognize the signals he's giving off.

"I'm well-trained and good at my job," I respond with a small smile, hoping a little teasing might lighten his mood.

It does not.

Getting a glower from him, I also add, "I can see that you're pale and perspiring, your pupils have dilated, your breathing has accelerated, you're swallowing frequently, probably in response to the bitter taste of adrenaline that's flooding your mouth, and your left foot is bouncing like you have a spring in your leg. I suspect, too, that your heart is pounding and your hands are clammy."

He's more than just a little irked at being so efficiently outed, but now that he knows there's no covering his reactions from me, he takes the opportunity to wipe his sweaty palms on his track pants and makes a conscious effort to still his jittery leg.

"You still haven't told me what you expect to accomplish by having me sit in the corner," he observes sulkily.

"I know," I admit, "because part of the lesson to be learned lies in figuring that out for yourself."

His leg is back to bouncing again, which assures me he is genuinely engaged in our conversation.

"Now, if you don't feel up to it today, Malcolm, all you have to do is say so, but sooner or later we're going to have to do this or something like it. It is a necessary step to your recovery. A fundamental building block, and you're not going to achieve much progress until you do this."

He's looking quite petrified now, and I can't say I blame him. He doesn't know me yet, and I'm asking him to turn his back on me, though I'm still not convinced he's realized yet that will be the net effect of sitting him in the corner. There's no telling what I'm capable of, and I’d guess that even here in the Bunker he has more strangers with potential reason to hurt him than any ten ordinary men. 

I could reassure him by pointing out that doing anything to hurt him would, at the very least, cost me a life-long friendship because I’m here at Trip's request and Trip wants him to get better; but I won't. He needs to find some way to let his rational mind override his instinctive fear, and it will be far more effective if he can decide on his own that I can be trusted than if I spoon-feed him reasons why it's better for me not to harm him.

"What happens today if I say no?" he asks, and again the anxiety’s peeping out.

I shake my head. "I'm not going to tell you that. In life, we don't always know the consequences of our actions beforehand. I just want you to evaluate this one activity on its potential merits and decide whether you're strong enough to cope with it today."

"You're not giving me much help in making the decision, you know," he complains bitterly.

"That isn't my intent," I admit. "In fact, I think you will come to realize that most of my help will feel like the mental, emotional, and spiritual equivalent of an unanesthetized dental extraction."

"Well, fuck me!" He gives a dark laugh and visibly relaxes, which isn't surprising. I've confirmed for him that what I'm asking him to do will be horrible, which gives him permission to freak out a little and relieves him of the burden of hiding his anxiety.

I consider moving around the desk and sitting in the armchair beside him, but conclude quickly that I think he would prefer the distance. So I just lean forward instead.

"Look, Malcolm, I know I said I think you can handle this, but I could be wrong. That's why it has to be your choice. All I know for sure is that you will either succeed and derive a sense of accomplishment from it, or fail and learn something to help you do better next time."

"And will you let me know if I've succeeded?" he asks.

I shake my head. "I won't have to. You'll know before I do."

"How?"

"Because we've been discussing this long enough now for you to have set some expectations," I tell him. "You already have some idea of what you want to happen, what you want to do and not do. You've set the objectives. You'll know if you meet them."

He sits very still for a long time. I'm not even sure he's breathing, but his eyes move from one side to the other occasionally, as if he's having an internal debate. Finally, he sighs deeply.

"Fuck it all," he says softly. "I'll try it."

I request and receive Malcolm's permission before I move his wheelchair, and again when I offer support to help him move to my chair in the corner; and I'm careful to put my arm out and let him grab on to me rather than putting my hands on him.

He accepts my assistance relatively graciously and complies readily enough when I encourage him to start the 4-7-8 breathing. I stay in his eye-line for a minute or two while he settles in, and then slowly move away. 

At first, he manages to maintain his breathing quite well, all things considered. I stand directly behind him for a minute or two, until I am certain that he’s firmly focused on whatever he's using to keep control. Finally, I begin to inch away. I've not even completed my first step when I hear a small hitch. He has gone completely still, listening, waiting to see what happens next. Given his history, this has got to be _tremendously_ stressful for him. Eventually, he needs to breathe again, and the first few breaths are a little shaky because he's held it so long; but soon, he resumes the 4-7-8 pattern.

I stay where I am, watching, waiting for him to relax the tiniest bit. It takes all of ten minutes, but eventually, it happens, and the chair shifts. Instantly, his breath catches and he shifts his weight. He takes a few little gasping breaths, stops, and after a few seconds, perhaps half a minute, resumes the breathing pattern. 

I could stop the exercise right now and give him an easy win if I wanted, but I don't think the general has ever taken the easy way in his life. I think he'd feel cheated if I stopped him before he hit a wall. I think he's someone who needs to push himself to the limits of his capacity, and I don't think it matters at the moment whether he overcomes his limitations or falls flat. He just needs to find out, to the last millimetre, how far he can push himself, so he can do better next time.

But that doesn't mean I can't help him, just a little.

"You're doing well, Malcolm," I say in a low, encouraging tone, and he visibly starts. "Just focus on your breathing. Meanwhile, I'm just going to potter around a bit."

"P-Potter around?" if he's aware of the anxiety in his voice, I'm sure he hates it.

"Paperwork, correspondence, organize my desk drawer," I say casually. "Perhaps I'll even dust. I'd like you to just sit tight and practice that breathing."

I hear some muttering, which I suspect to be profanity, and return to my desk, to activate my computer. The screen is divided into three sections. The top section is subdivided into three video images. There are a handful of cameras installed around the room, all of them on a hardwired, closed-circuit feed to this monitor. Moreover, the cables running from the cameras to my monitor go through a PVC conduit mounted to the wall at ceiling height. I've made sure Malcolm knows it's my standard practice to record sessions, but I've also made it clear that if anyone wants to hack the feed, they can only do it from inside this room. Since I've insisted that Trip keyed the lock only to my access card, no one can get inside the room without my buzzing them in, unless I hit my panic button.

The middle section is his biometric readout. Two thirds of that section is a pane displaying two squiggly lines, an EKG and an EEG. The other third provides numeric readouts of Malcolm's heart and respiration rates, his blood pressure, temperature, and blood oxygen levels. Trip has warned me not to put too much stock in these metrics right now as they're still experimental improvements on existing equipment already in use in the fleet. He says the most I can count on them reporting accurately is the difference between 'alive' and 'dead', but I suspect they're much better than that. Still, the only data we've been accepting is that which we receive from the monitors that have been attached to Malcolm. They send their telemetry to the nurse's station in the corridor outside Malcolm's room. We know this data is not one hundred percent reliable, either, except when he's in his room attached to the stationary machine. The portable monitor, a device about the dimensions of two PADDs stacked together, is susceptible to data corruption and outages as Malcolm moves about and passes computers, security stations, and other sources of EM radiation throughout the bunker. Nevertheless, I use this information now. All I really need it to show me is whether he is becoming more or less agitated.

The final section is a task pane. Correspondence is something I can work on in fits and starts, giving it only a part of my attention and interrupting myself as necessary to have a word with my patient. This isn't like our first session, though, where he refused to participate and I completed my session notes just to have something to do. This time, he is already working very hard, as I can tell from the monitors, and I will be using the small noises of my working to provide him with additional stimuli, to see how he copes with the – for healthy people – mild anxiety of the sounds of unknown activities occurring behind his back.

Of course, he’s about as far off ‘healthy’ as you can get, mentally speaking, without requiring a strait-jacket. His awareness of danger goes from 0-60 in a split second and doesn’t stop to ask questions on the way.

The first tap of my finger on the keyboard opening the correspondence window causes all the biometric readouts to shoot up. On the video feed, Malcolm visibly flinches. 

"I'm just going to take care of some of my correspondence, now," I tell him. "Are you doing all right?"

The readouts spike again, but then go back down a bit. I get a mumbled response.

"I'm sorry, Malcolm, I need a clear _yes_ or _no._ "

"Yess," he hisses from across the room. It’s a blatant lie, but I let it go. He’s in no danger at the moment, and the entire purpose of this exercise is for him to practice coping with being _not_ ok. I watch the monitors for a bit, and he returns to the 4-7-8 breathing. The readings don't return to baseline (in these circumstances, which must be desperately stressful for him, I wouldn’t expect that), but so far, he's doing well.

I set the correspondence pane to accept manually entered data. In addition to wanting to avoid dictating my letters with a patient in earshot, I also don't want to give him too much information about what’s going on behind his back. The more he knows about what I'm doing, the easier it will be for him, and I have determined at this point that he doesn't want this to be easy.

As expected, all the readouts shoot up again in response to the rapid tap-tap-tapping as I begin typing away. He has a little more trouble recapturing the rhythm of his breathing this time, but he just manages to do it, for a minute or two. 

Then the most peculiar thing begins to happen.

=/\=

I am not a general psychologist. I am not one to analyse some office minion's Oedipal dreams and help him determine how to appropriately interact with his attractive female supervisor so that he can avoid losing his job and eventually advance in his career. I'm not going to entertain the inconstant musings of some well-coiffed Cabinet minister's bored wife until she finds something less self-destructive than swilling champagne, popping designer drugs, and fornicating with household servants and tradesmen to help her deal with the realization that her life of privilege will never be what she expected before her liver explodes, her kidneys calcify, and undiagnosed tertiary syphilis Swiss-cheeses her brain. I don't deal with the oversexed, the disaffected, and the disillusioned. I don't train undisciplined minds to master their impulses and behave appropriately.

I am a psychological traumatologist. I take men who are afraid to sleep because of the harm they might do to themselves or others in the throes of a waking nightmare and teach them that they don't have to be afraid of the dark. I take women who can't bear to be touched and help them find comfort in a hug. I take broken minds and broken spirits and mend them the best I can, or, more accurately, help them mend themselves, so that they can function in the world again, be part of a family, join a group of friends.

Still, Commodore Tucker did not hire me solely for my specialty. There are any number of traumatologists in the Empire nowadays. In the past five or ten years it has become a highly sought-after specialty. The Empire has been at war for decades, and the stresses of serving in combat have become so extreme that the Fleet and MACOs alike are now medically discharging veterans who are too dangerous and unpredictable to serve on combat ships, releasing them on an unprepared civilian population like so many rabid dogs. So, my colleagues and I are needed, so much so, that the Empire now pays a stipend sufficient to cover the costs of food and lodging to encourage students to enter the field. Being who he is and knowing who the patient is, the commodore could have, literally, drafted into service any qualified practitioner he wanted.

He did not choose me simply because he knows me, either – or even because he trusts me, though I am sure those reasons had a great deal to do with his final decision to hire me.

Ultimately, he chose me because of my superior qualifications.

In every field of human endeavour, there are those who stand head and shoulders above the rest. They are leaders, trend-setters, teachers, scholars, and experts. They are the inventors of theories, formulas, and equations that help us describe the world; the discoverers of elements, particles, compounds, and materials that help us construct it; the designers of machines and essential tools that help is manipulate it; the developers of practices and protocols that help us organize it; the founding fathers and mothers of subspecialties and entire schools of thought that help us understand it. When you think of genetics, you think of Gregor Mendel, Josef Mengele, Crick and Watson, and Arik Soong. When you think of chemistry, it's Joseph Priestly, Alfred Nobel, Madame Curie, and Fritz Haber. In physics, you think of Archimedes, Newton, Einstein, Bohr, Heisenberg, Schrödinger, Hawking, Cochrane, and now, Tucker. They are the Immortals.

I do not imagine that I might someday stand among the likes of Ivan Pavlov, B.F. Skinner, Maslow, Freud, Jung, and Harry Harlow. Traumatology as a sub-specialty of psychology is in its infancy. We don't yet have a pantheon of great thinkers to venerate and imitate. We must look to one another for the best ideas and try to improve upon them, and for all I know, my name and my work won't even rate a footnote in the texts used to train student traumatologists a hundred years from now. Still, at least _for the moment_ , it is not immodest for me to say that any list of the best practitioners active in my field of study would have to include my name in the top ten.

I am a top-tier specialist _within_ my specialty, and I can count on one hand the colleagues and rivals who can claim experience and achievements on par with my own. For the past fifteen years I have maintained both a clinical practice and a research focus. Throughout my clinical career, I have treated exclusively veterans and, more recently, active duty servicemen and women. As psychological trauma goes, their experiences are unique and distinct from the types of trauma civilians suffer in that military trauma almost always consists of not only things that have happened _to_ the patient, but also things _the patient_ has done to _others_. They have to deal not only with the shame of a victim who was too weak or afraid to stop an aggressor, and the survivor's guilt that plagues nearly anyone who has survived an event in which others nearby were killed, but also the shame and guilt of an aggressor who looks back on the things he or she has done and realizes the enormity of his or her actions. For many of our veterans, their trauma starts the day they leave home for basic training, and continues right up until they die in the line of duty or are mustered out on medical grounds.

In addition to seeing patients, I have spent the past six years directing a longitudinal study of several hundred men and women serving in the Imperial Fleet and the MACOs. Starting with a survey we sent them at home the month before they left for basic training, we have been collecting data on our subjects, their attitudes and experiences, the traumas they endure, the coping strategies they use, and the trajectories of their career paths and personal lives at quarterly intervals. At any given time, I have from six to twenty undergraduate, graduate, and post-doctoral students collating and analyzing data, testing hypotheses, describing trends and correlations, conducting interviews with our subjects, and making historical comparisons with data gathered in years past. The newest member of my team invariably spends his or her days triaging my correspondence by referring most inquirers to journal articles I have published in the past that address their particular concerns because I simply don't have time to answer the dozen daily requests I receive for information on studies I completed years ago. We submit an annual report to the Imperial Office of Military Personnel, and just last year, presented sufficient evidence supporting the benefits of simply having someone to talk to about a traumatic event for the admiralty to train crew members as counsellors. Of course it's not the same as having a fully qualified traumatologist on board, and all of the newly trained counsellors will have to have a 'real' primary specialty in some other department, but it's a step in the right direction. Within the next four years, every ship in the 'Fleet and every facility will have at least one mental health specialist available to the crew. 

I work hard to effect change, which is usually very difficult, and often somewhat dangerous in a system where speaking truth to power can so easily be construed (or wilfully misconstrued when fragile egos are involved) as treason. I strive to think outside the box and to see things from a different point of view. I have no desire to prove somebody else's theories by replicating their results in a repeat of a clinical trial. That kind of work is necessary, but unchallenging. I want to be a leader. I want to set the bar both in research and in the clinical treatment of psychological trauma patients. I don't do what other people are doing. I look forward to reading the results of their work when they publish, but I go out of my way to find something else that interests me. As a result of my tendency to strike out at an odd angle and blaze my own path, I have published observations my colleagues have called ‘uncanny’, made discoveries they consider ‘miraculous’, and developed protocols and practices they think are ‘inspired’. I might not be a legend in my field a century from now, that is for history to decide; but at the moment, I _am_ a rock star.

So, Commodore Tucker hired me to treat General Reed not just because we're old friends, but also because there aren't five other people in the Empire who are as qualified as I am to help this great and terrible, horribly damaged, sad and tragic figure who sits before me now.

Induction into the military is inevitably a traumatic experience in and of itself as it involves breaking down the individual and reforming him or her as part of a team. Some recruits are more adaptable than others. They may be team players by nature, so with a dent here and a ding there, they mold themselves to fit the space they are required to occupy and get on with their lives in service to the Empire. 

Others are not so malleable. Whether they're hard-headed, independent and uncompromising, or just lacking in coping strategies that allow them to adapt to the military lifestyle, they struggle more than their more flexible peers. Far beyond getting battered and bruised, they're often stripped down or shattered and reassembled with elements added in or left out in order to make them suitable to fulfil the needs of their unit, like a piece of flat-pack furniture with parts that don't appear on the assembly diagram or a jigsaw puzzle that is missing some pieces.

However they emerge from induction training, the vast majority of our service men and women start their careers with unresolved trauma, and it only gets worse from there. As newly commissioned soldiers enter active duty, we take their still-fragile, recently damaged minds, batter them relentlessly, and expect them to heal. In military service, punishment even for minor infractions and simple, honest mistakes is arguably unduly harsh. Additionally, the trauma of battle, losses, the occasional in-fighting and so-called ‘friendly-fire’ ‘accidents’ are piled haphazardly upon the imperfect psychological foundations laid during basic training. Most of the women and many of the less physically imposing men also face sexual predation from both genders. Those who would be leaders, either through greater strength, superior intelligence, or both, must contend with the ever-present threat of a coup and the occasional betrayal when one of their underlings attempts one. 

Those who find support and camaraderie with a like-minded colleague often unwittingly put themselves at greater psychological risk. Some officers, insecure of their capacity to lead, are exceedingly suspicious of any subordinate who might command the loyalty of even one or two fellow underlings and will seek to separate the friends by any means possible. If a transfer seems inconvenient or insufficiently brutal, there are any number of duties on a combat ship to which a popular junior officer can be assigned which can be made to ensure his or her prompt demise. If the loss of a seasoned officer proves some hardship to the crew, at least the captain will have reminded them of where their loyalties had better lie, for their own well-being.

There is no question in my mind that my patient is intimately familiar with both sides of the Human equation. On the one hand, he is slight of stature, polite, and surprisingly soft-spoken (when he isn't spewing invective), which leads me to believe he was raised to be a gentleman. His interactions with Liz are sometimes unexpectedly indulgent of her doting, which suggests that at some time in his past, he was acquainted with genuine tenderness. All indications point to him having been a target of aggression well before he became an aggressor.

On the other hand, by the time he'd discovered his own capacity for aggression, his time as a victim had taught him extremely well how to use pain or threat of pain, shame, fear, and humiliation, to make others do what he wanted. He would have had to become ruthless, brutal, and cruel to acquire the power he held in the MACOs and later as a member of the Triad. And then there was that alleged traitor he cut to ribbons on live television, mandatory viewing for the entire Empire. I was on duty at the VA hospital when that happened. We were herded like cattle into the common rooms and lounges, any place in the hospital that had a TV screen, attendance was taken, and government security forces monitored us to ensure we remained attentive until the victim's dying gasp. The episode set some of my patients back months or even years in their recovery. One of them who was already on suicide watch still managed to find a way to end his life despite our vigilance. The number of psychiatric admissions to both veterans' hospitals and civilian facilities skyrocketed in the following week and then climbed steadily for more than a month after that. I wondered at the time if the great and terrible General Reed had any clue the damage he was doing, and if he had, did he care. Now, I’m convinced that, not only did he know to the precise degree the harm he was causing, but that it was his specific intent to do so.

I'm also more than certain that he couldn't have done otherwise if he had wished to. 

Though only a fool or someone with a death wish would ever have said so aloud, I don't think there was a person in the Empire who couldn't have recognized General Reed as a broken man. For all his power and authority and despite the physical skills he must have possessed to reach the high position he attained, something inside of him must have been broken for him to be able to carry out such an inhuman act with no display of regret, compassion, or even disgust. I'm not saying everyone would have recognized the damage as trauma; I'm sure most people believed he was just born cruel and bloodthirsty by nature, like certain dogs, born with defective regions of their brains which cause them to be hyper-aggressive, that are incapable of seeing any situation as something other than a threat and are therefore untrainable, prone to biting the hand that feeds them, and, regrettably, sadly desirable for fighting. Such animals, in my opinion, should be put down or utilized for medical research to develop medications that will allow future generations to live normal lives. It is cruel to maintain these animals in a heightened state of rage just for the amusement of wagering on which one is most likely to kill another when they're thrown into a pit together. 

General Reed, however, is not untrainable, and I'm sure at least a half dozen of my colleagues would have recognized this, if only because it would have been impossible for him to attain the status he held if he walked around in a red-hot rage all the time. More than likely, if such had been the case, he would have died, either in an accident or at the hands of his colleagues, before he had advanced out of the ranks of junior officers; for while a certain degree of aggression is desirable and even encouraged in fighting men and women, and even though The Powers That Be don't seem to mind individuals picking one another off from time to time over petty squabbles and old grudges, the kind of blind fury that leads to carelessness and mission failure is generally discouraged.

The general's rage, his fury and aggression, are fuelled by trauma. His intimate understanding of trauma, in turn, allows him to wield his rage, fury, and aggression like a scalpel, dissecting and ultimately destroying anyone he turns on. His years in power enabled him to avoid his fears and use his trauma, turning it into a weapon, but that power also eroded – or better said, supplanted – his coping skills. The past year of ongoing trauma, with no real strategy for how to deal with it, save perhaps plotting revenge, has left him physically and psychologically vulnerable. Now, finding himself physically helpless to carry out the punitive and vengeful acts he might have previously employed to cope with his anxieties and concerns has pushed him beyond vulnerable to the point of being fragile. So it's no surprise that he now finds even the small anxiety of being asked to sit with his back to someone almost more than he can bear.

I know this, I understand it. I understand trauma. I was ready for a shattered patient, a man whose sense of self had been demolished, a man who views every movement as a potential threat and every word as a possible lie or a taunt. I was ready for a patient who was simply incapable of coping with any psychological stressors, but for all my excellent training, my cutting-edge research, my ‘uncanny’ observations, ‘miraculous’ discoveries, and ‘inspired’ practices, I am utterly unprepared for what happens over the next few minutes as I compose a message containing instructions to my research team at the VA hospital in Georgia.

First, his breathing falters. This is perfectly acceptable. In fact, as I have already determined to push my patient to his limit today, it's virtually a requirement of the exercise. Next, he falls into deep, rapid breathing, which makes it necessary for me to watch more closely his blood gasses and brain activity. In strictly medical terms, there would be no harm in allowing him to hyperventilate to the point of fainting. Psychologically speaking, it would be an absolute betrayal. My patient is already fragile. In agreeing to participate in this exercise, he has opened himself up to all manner of judgements and assumptions from me. He has allowed me to see his weakness and his struggle to overcome it; he is letting me watch him fight his fear. I _cannot_ allow him to fail. A stalemate is acceptable; a loss is not. Moreover, an unconscious person is subject to an incalculable degree of vulnerability, exposed to innumerable harms and humiliations from having a moustache drawn on his face with a permanent marker to, quite simply, being murdered.

So I monitor his oxygen and CO2 levels, his EEG (which is showing some unusual activity), and his coloring on the video feed. 

And then he whimpers quietly, a soft little animal sound. Unexpected from such a man as this, but not unheard-of in my practice. Touch-typing has become a lost art with the refinement of speech-to-text in the past century or so, but it is a skill I have cultivated, specifically for circumstances such as this, when I need to enter information at the same time that I am monitoring or engaging with a patient. So as I watch the video feed and the biometric data I am able to continue typing faster and louder, giving Malcolm the stimulus needed to further heighten his anxiety.

There is much lip-licking, a little more whimpering, and some yawning. Then his breathing shifts again, and he begins to _pant_ . With his tongue out, and his lips drawn back, he is _panting like a dog_. 

I stop typing now, and take a long, critical look at my readouts. Malcolm's EEG has gone completely haywire; it looks almost as if I'm monitoring two minds at once, one superimposed over the other. But he isn't seizing despite the bizarre brain activity; his vitals are steady, his blood gasses are levelling out, and he's in no apparent medical distress. 

I decide to let the episode continue and resume my typing. He whimpers again at the clacking of the keys and brings one hand up to his mouth to lick it. He holds his fingers strangely, as if the digits are joined and he no longer possesses an opposable thumb, but otherwise, I recognize this as a self-soothing gesture along the lines of nail-biting or rocking.

I whack the return key considerably harder than necessary, and he snarls and resumes panting. The chair shifts; he growls, corrects his posture, whines a bit in his throat, and returns to licking his…paw?

Behaviorally, it appears that Malcolm is experiencing a psychotic break, but otherwise, he seems all right. His BP is actually coming down a bit, and his heart rate is slowing, too. I don't know what the hell his brain waves are telling me, but physiologically, he seems to be _coping_. 

He resumes panting and…yeah. No. I've seen enough. It's time to bring the general back. I need to think – hard – about what I've seen; what, consciously or unconsciously, he’s _allowed_ me to see. It may well be a coping behavior, and it appears to be a very effective one, at that, but not a good one. It may have stabilized his vital signs, but I'd wager every last credit I have to my name, hock everything I own and bet that, too, that he isn't mentally or emotionally capable of ordering a cup of coffee right now, let alone performing the functions of his office.

I approach carefully, speaking quietly to him as I move in his direction, and I realize I am already dealing with him in the same way I would a frightened dog.

He starts growling. Aggressively.

"Malcolm?" I say wheedlingly. "It's all right. You've done well."

"Rowrowrowrowrow." It’s a grumbling warning sound.

He doesn't turn to look at me, but he tilts his head, clearly listening.

It isn't often that I genuinely _don't_ know what to do. Patients often have unexpected reactions, but training and experience have taught me the right actions to take in most situations. This time, though, well, nothing I've encountered has prepared me for anything like this, and _who_ the patient is has as much to do with things as _what_ he's doing. 

"Malcolm, stop it," I say firmly. 

The growl he gives me raises goose flesh on my arms and the back of my neck. I don't want to try the conventional commands one uses for dogs, such as _heel_ and _hush_. That dual EEG gives me pause. If General Reed is mentally present right now, barking orders at him could be taken as an attempt to humiliate him, and, if he recovers, that could be dangerous for me.

"Malcolm, the session is over," I say as calmly as I can manage. 

He growls again.

"Let's get you back in your chair," I continue, ignoring the threat. I'm close enough now to reach out and touch him. "Let me help you."

I reach out to put my hand around his left bicep. He cries out, an inhuman sound like that of a dog that's been kicked, rises and turns on me with a speed he should not be able to manage in his condition. Before I know it he has struck me three times and lunged into my arms. I feel a sharp pressure on my neck, and then he goes limp. 

He's breathing rapidly and mumbling incoherently against my chest now. I pull him around the chair and out of the corner, and then let the two of us sink gently to the floor.

=/\=

Half an hour later, I nudge my dozing patient.

"Hmm?"

"Malcolm?"

I feel him tense, but he doesn't panic. I suspect he's all out of adrenaline for the moment.

"Do you want to talk about that?"

"No." 

There's no hesitation, but he's interestingly not emphatic.

"You know we'll have to, eventually."

"Yes, but not now."

"Are you ready to go back to your room?"

"Absolutely."

"Do you mind if I lift you into your chair?"

On this, he hesitates. "I suppose not," he finally decides.

The wheelchair is nearby. 

I work out. I'm more than strong enough to just embrace him under his arms, lift, pivot, and lower him into the seat. I help him get situated, sitting upright, his feet on the footrests, his clothing more or less in order, and then I wheel him over to the couch and sit facing him. "Malcolm, can you look at me?"

His head is slightly bowed, but he rolls his eyes up to meet mine. His shields are at maximum. He knows I’ve seen something he keeps very well hidden, and that letting me see it is going to have consequences.

"I…don't know what that was," I admit. "For the moment, I'm going to call it a psychotic episode brought on by stress, but I think we both know it was something…different."

He nods. 

"Has this happened before?"

Another nod.

"Recently?"

"Not to this degree."

"Ok."

There's a brief silence, and then, almost timidly, he asks, "What are you going to tell Commodore Tucker?"

He's actually asking two questions here, and I think he knows it. I decide to answer only the obvious one.

"I'm not going to tell him anything," I say. "Everything that happens in here is covered under Doctor-Patient confidentiality."

He nods again, processing that answer, then, in a voice that reveals more bitterness and grief than I think he would if he had any control over it, he asks, "Do you still think you can … fix … me?"

That was the other question, and I answer with perhaps a bit more confidence than I feel, "I told you before, I wouldn't give up on you as long as you didn't give up on me. It will take time, – How much? I don't know. – but I think, as long as we work together, we can, eventually, get you fighting fit again."

He shifts his posture slightly, then, and raises his head to look directly at me. He takes a deep breath, holds it for a moment and releases it, then licks his lips (to moisten them, not in that strange, animal way he was doing earlier) and says, "Thank you."

I smile and acknowledge with a nod. Neither of us has anything else to say right now. I return to my desk and page Liz. When she arrives, I buzz her in, and I can tell by her face that she knows something has happened; she looks at me and pales slightly. She catches herself just as she's about to ask, and addresses Malcolm instead, asking if he is ready to go back to his room. He acquiesces with a nod, and they are gone.

I pull a mirror out of my desk drawer to assess the damage. I have a black eye, a busted lip, and…teeth marks on my neck.

It's a good thing I have a couple of turtle necks in my wardrobe. If Trip asks, I'll tell him I walked into a door.

He may not believe me, but then treating General Malcolm Reed was never going to be without its dangers.

* * *

**Chapter Forty-Two**

**Setback and Resolution**

_Lieutenant (j.g.) Elizabeth Cutler_

Malcolm has injured his wrist. 

He was being stubborn, pushing too hard and overextending himself. He looked like a wrung out old dishrag, and was as grey as one, too, as he sat there in his wheelchair, trembling with exhaustion, hair dripping with perspiration, insisting that he could do one more lap walking the length of the parallel bars and back. 

I should have told him no. We spent a lot of time, Miguel and I – with input from Malcolm – planning the ideal rehabilitation program that would push him to his limits of endurance but allow sufficient time for recuperation between sessions. I don't know how she managed it, but getting him to participate in the planning, to take ownership of his own recovery, even before he started talking to her, was Ginny's first success. I still don't like how much she upsets him during their sessions – I can see his heart rate, respiration, and blood pressure go up on the monitor at the nurse's station – but there's no denying that she's helping him. 

Anyway, I should have stuck to the schedule. I should have reminded him that rest is as important a factor to his recovery as exercise. I should have told him, yet again, that muscles only recover when they are at rest.

But I have never been able to refuse him, and he is all too aware that my inability to say no is more than merely a function of his superior rank.

So I conceded to just _one more lap_ , to the end of the bars and back. 

He was so spent he couldn't even muster a look of smug satisfaction at getting me to give in. He simply grabbed the bars, hauled himself to his feet by an effort of sheer will, and began plodding ahead. It was only six meters to the other end, but by the time he got there, fatigue had robbed him of his coordination. His right hand missed the bar altogether, and he was already leaning into it to help support his weight as he turned to walk back to his chair. So when he went down, he went down hard, and because he was too exhausted to catch himself he landed awkwardly on his right arm.

We were lucky. He wasn't seriously injured. It was just a mild sprain, but it did require a brace. Something about the x-ray prompted Miguel to run a full bone density scan – _after_ reading us both the Riot Act, of course. The results of the scan weren't terrible, but they weren't good news. 

Like everything else in the human body, the skeleton requires more than just an appropriate diet to stay healthy. Bones need weight bearing exercise to remain strong. The only exercise Malcolm got for most of a year was pushing himself from one end of that damned tank to the other.

When I say we were lucky he wasn't seriously injured, I mean we were lucky he didn't snap all three bones in his arm like they were so many dry twigs.

Now Miguel is angry with himself for not thinking to do the bone scan sooner, and I can't help but feel that he's taking it out on Malcolm and me just a little. Despite all our talks, and Trip's assurances that Malcolm would have the final say in all decisions concerning his care and recovery, Miguel has made unilateral changes to Malcolm's physiotherapy plan, his medication regimen, his daily schedule – as a function of the meds schedule – and even his diet. 

I had to confront Miguel about his high-handed decision-making. Malcolm's autonomy is too important to his psychological recovery to just rip it away like that.

"But Malcolm doesn't even _like_ broccoli!" I protested.

"How in bloody hell would _you_ know?" demanded our ungrateful patient.

I rolled my eyes and looked at him. "You think I don't notice? You think I don't _watch_ you? You never choose broccoli when it's an option and you take it down like medicine when it's put in front of you."

He gave me a slightly mortified look and muttered, "You're an uncommonly peculiar woman." 

I had no idea what that was supposed to mean, so I ignored it, and told him bitterly, "Don't be an idiot. It was my _job._ When you first came here, you had no interest in anything except not being hurt and not being forced into anything against your will, remember? You were so angry and anxious and upset most of the time that you could hardly stand to eat. It was my job to watch and figure out what you like so we could get you to put some meat on your bones. Why do you think you get pineapple every day now? And fish and chips with an extra-large serving of mushy peas at least once a week, though God only knows why you like those awful peas so much."

He looked embarrassed then, and maybe a little flattered. "I…Thank you," he mumbled, surprising me with gratitude. "I never realised."

"I wouldn't expect you to," I told him in a huff. "Up until last year, it's been all about you for ages, to the point you don’t even notice it anymore. Everybody around you knew their health and wellbeing, if not their very _lives_ , depended on anticipating and satisfying _your_ needs. It’s not like anyone actually believes Alex chopped one of his own fingers off in a kitchen accident. There's no reason you _should_ realize someone is actually paying attention to your likes and dislikes in an effort to make things easier for you."

"Alex?" he said, puzzled.

" _Your chef,_ Mal!"

"Ahh, of course, _Alex_ ," he muttered as if there was something significant about the name but he couldn’t quite remember what it was. “I thought it was Alice…”

Miguel thought I should get clued in that now _he_ was taking charge.

"Like broccoli or not, he's gonna have to eat it, and collard greens and cabbage and lots of other leafy greens and cruciferous veggies, along with fatty fish and canned sardines and salmon with the bones, and maybe a few other things he doesn't like! That, along with IV supplementation and a daily multivitamin, might just undo the damage in a couple of years."

"IV…Wait, _years_?" Malcolm gasped.

"Miguel, I thought we were a team!" I reminded him, gesturing to include our thunderstruck patient. "The three of us are supposed to figure out _together_ what's best for Malcolm's recovery."

"Yeah, we're a team, all right," he snarled, "but lately mah quarterback’s had her head so far up mah center's ass that she can only see daylight when he opens his damn mouth!" Rounding on Malcolm, he added, "An' if you don't understand the American football reference, General, Ah'll be happy to draw you a picture!"

"Look, you've made your point," I told him, weakening, "but you need to at least include Malcolm in the decision-making process."

"And I'm not agreeing to anything without Liz's approval," Malcolm added, surprising me again with the level of trust he showed in me.

Glowering, the doctor said, "Well, then, she's just gonna have to convince you to do whatever Ah say, because right now Ah don't think either one of you knows your ass from your elbow when it comes to what's good for you, General."

"Miguel, why are you doing this?" I asked plaintively. "We've worked so hard to build trust, and you have no idea how difficult that is in the Imperial Fleet and the MACOs." _Leave alone in a man who’s been through the things that Malcolm has._

He sighed. "That's just it, Liz. Right now, Ah don't trust either one of you to know what the right thing is. As the physician of record, his treatment and recovery is ultimately _mah_ responsibility, so Ah need to take charge."

"You don't _trust_ us?" I squeaked, my throat tight with hurt and outrage. "How can you _say_ that?"

"First of all, the general here obviously doesn't recognize his own limits," the reply came with a scowl. "Or he's just incapable of accepting them. Then you got so caught up in _playing_ nurse to your boyfriend here that you went and forgot that you actually _are a nurse_ and abandoned all standards of _professional_ medical practice, so you were in no position to rein him in!"

I knew exactly what he was alluding to with the word 'professional', and I couldn’t help blushing a bit guiltily.

"I know my record-keeping has been a little lax," I admitted. "And I will fix that, per your orders, _Doctor_ , but you can hardly say I've been otherwise unprofessional or abandoned the standard of care."

Miguel hasn't just made unilateral decisions affecting Malcolm. He has imposed orders on me, as well. For starters, if I want to remain in charge of Malcolm's physiotherapy and general care, I am now required to submit a daily SOAP note for my superior’s approval. SOAP stands for _Subjective, Objective, Assessment,_ and _Plan._ I resent this demand, but not because it's tedious and time consuming, or because it's more supervision than a nurse of my experience would ordinarily be subjected to; or even because it was incredibly condescending when Miguel actually sat me down and showed me how to write one as if I was a first-year nursing student and didn't know how. I resent it because someone actually had to tell me to do it. 

Charting and documentation is as important to good medicine as the caregiver's knowledge and compassion for the patient. It's how we know what treatment the patient has received, what has worked, what has not, and how the patient is progressing. It's what allows someone else to take over in case some emergency prevents the primary caregiver from attending the patient, and, as Miguel pointed out, it's how we know when to tell the patient to slow down.

I’d had the idiotic idea that, since Malcolm was my only patient, daily progress notes weren't necessary. I see him every day. I know how he's been doing. I know him better than anyone, probably better than he wants anyone to know him. I rationalized that not keeping notes was protecting his privacy, which – if asked – I’d have argued was a psychological benefit for such a fragile, paranoid patient.

"You think you know what's going on, do you?" Miguel challenged me. "Fine then, _Nurse_." Turnabout was fair play and he had no qualms about using my professional title as a snide insult, as I had just used his. "Compare the patient's current condition to how he was doing two weeks ago. Identify the areas of greatest improvement, the one area – aside from his sprained wrist – that needs the most intensive therapy, and recommend three exercises to improve strength and functioning of that weakest part of his anatomy."

Appalled to realize that because of my complacency this was information I simply didn’t have, I just stammered at him. "I…I don't know."

The admission didn’t placate him. "Well, make somethin' the fuck up, then!” he sneeringly encouraged me. “Without your notes, hell, Ah won't know if you're lyin' or not!"

When I finally got his point – when I understood what it meant to keep good records even in _this_ situation, not just professionally, the way they taught us in training, but practically, in terms of the quality of care I was able to give my patient – I just wanted to crawl away somewhere and sit and cry in the dark. Without a reliable, documented patient history, I couldn't do my job properly. Worse still, it shouldn't have taken Miguel calling me out to make me realize it.

When Malcolm saw how upset I was, he became incensed. I saw his shoulders stiffen, saw his fingers curl around the ends of the chair’s arm-rests. "If you don't ease up, Doctor…"

"You’ll what?" Miguel interrupted, probably deliberately to piss Malcolm off because he'd learned by then how much he hated being interrupted. "The best you can do right now is to spit at me, an' if Ah back up another five feet, why, you can't even manage that!"

"I won't always be bed-ridden, Doctor." I’d seen this so often, the way the eyes almost seemed to change color, to go shades lighter and infinitely colder. My spine crawled as I heard that mildly polite tone that anyone who knows him understands is so much more dangerous than any shout could be. "When I'm up and about again…"

"You'll do nothing, Mal." I could risk cutting him off, because honestly, I didn't really care if he threatened me or what he could do to me in the future. Maybe I am as screwed up as everybody thinks, but the most important thing to me is _him_ . "Because he's right. It doesn't matter how much I help you or what I do for you, if I'm not keeping proper medical records the plain truth is that I'm failing you, professionally _and_ ethically. That makes me no better than Phlox." 

"Well, Ah wouldn't go that far," Miguel said, in a more conciliatory tone. He’d never met Phlox personally, of course, but he must have gleaned plenty of pointers towards the Denobulan’s particular set of medical ethics.

Malcolm, however, was gaping at me. "Are you out of your bloody mind?" he snarled. "Phlox was a fucking sociopath, Liz, or have you forgotten that? He vivisected _sentient creatures_ . He was going to operate on _me_ without an anaesthetic! I know I've been a hateful bastard for as long as you've known me, but even I had a greater purpose to my cruelty than just wanting to hear something scream!

“....Most of the time,” he had the grace to add, a little wryly. The whole Empire was made to bear witness to the time he didn’t.

"Be that as it may," I told him, warmed to the core by his defense of me. "I've only been doing half my job. Miguel is right, and he shouldn't have had to point it out to me. I want your word that you won't ever retaliate for what he did today."

His resentment, once earned, was slow to dissipate. He gave Miguel a dark look. "Fine," he grumped eventually, clearly hoping I'd accept that word as _his_ word.

"That's not good enough," I insisted, knowing to do so would leave him the loophole of saying he never actually swore to anything. "I want a _promise_ . You may be a lot of things, hateful bastard included, though I really don't think so, but you've also always been a man of your word. _Promise_ me you won't retaliate."

He didn’t like being backed into a corner – literally or metaphorically. It had been a long time since he’d given me that chilly, measuring look, but within a moment he hooded the gray stare and shrugged, glancing at the doctor as though suggesting he should be thankful I was there to plead his cause.

“Malcolm, this matters to me.”

"Fine," he said again, now turning on me a narrow-eyed glare like that of an angry teenager being told he wasn't having any fun anytime soon unless he did his homework and chores. "I _promise_ I won't retaliate for his telling you off."

"Or anything else he does as your doctor," I added, "because he really is trying to help you and if anything ever happens to him, you'll have me to answer to."

Scowling first at me and then at Miguel, he didn't even bother to question what I could possibly imagine I might do to him in that eventuality. Somehow, without the words ever being said, we have established that I, of all people, am the one person in the universe whose opinion matters to him. It is enough that I would be displeased to learn that he has hurt Miguel.

Sometimes this development hits me so hard that I literally stop in my tracks. It’s like having my own pet Tyrannosaurus Rex allow me to stroke his nose and give him orders.

"Fuck it all," he muttered. "Fine. As long as he has your support, he's safe from me, you have my word – but if you ever question his motives, all bets are off, got it?"

I nodded. "Fair enough." Then, turning to Miguel, I asked, "Now, do you think instead of prescribing a menu you could offer some dietary options and let Malcolm pick the foods he would prefer?"

The doctor was still pissed off. Glaring at me he said, "Next week, _if_ the two of you show me you can manage to follow doctor's orders _this_ week."

"Look, Miguel…" I tried to plead. 

He wasn’t having any of it. He looked at both of us from behind firmly-folded arms. "Or you can find another doctor."

I looked to Malcolm. Every time there has been a decision to be made, I have advocated for him to make the final call. That’s how I try to give him back some of the dignity that was so brutally stripped from him back in Sickbay.

He shrugged again, as if he couldn’t care less. 

"I've had to follow unpleasant orders before," he said with a smirk. "If feeding me broccoli is the worst he can do to me, I'm sure I'll survive."

"All right then," Miguel said, eyeing him.

"Fine," Malcolm agreed, more or less, returning the eye.

I'm smart enough to know when I'm in the middle of a pissing contest. Not wanting to get all wet, I guided Miguel to the door. 

"Perfect. We'll see you next week then, Doctor," I told him. "And I'll transmit my daily progress notes starting tonight."

"That'll be fine," he agreed. "Ah'd appreciate it if you sent them every evening after he's down for the night. Then the next day can start with a report of overnight activities and how he slept."

=/\=

As it turns out, Malcolm only had to eat broccoli once. Miguel left Elaine a list of menu options and let her know what I'd told him about broccoli. He just wanted to know that Malcolm would follow medical orders for his own wellbeing.

I've been submitting my SOAP notes religiously, both for physiotherapy and for Malcolm's general progress. The subjective component is still a bit of a struggle because, while he has no problems reporting positive progress, Malcolm has been so heavily conditioned to conceal any vulnerabilities that he sometimes seems to lack the vocabulary to talk about the areas where he feels he’s struggling. I've found some assessments in the _Defiant_ 's medical database to help with that, though. All he has to do is check boxes or circle something, and though even these small admissions probably take some effort, I can use them to guide our conversation. 

The objective component is nothing more than a record of Malcolm's vitals, input and output, diet, medication, activities, and the number of sets and reps of each exercise he completes in physiotherapy and how much weight he uses with the weight-bearing exercises. I complete most of my assessment while he’s doing his exercises, unless he needs hands-on attention to stabilize him or guide his limbs through the correct motions so he doesn't twist or bend awkwardly and strain his joints. He rarely needs me to push him to work harder. More often than not once he gets the hang of an exercise, I find myself warning him to dial it back a notch or two.

At the end of every session we discuss together what he should try to do in the next one. I’m determined to give him as much autonomy as possible in this. He always kept himself in fantastic shape on _Enterprise_ , and at the beginning of the project, I could tell he had continued to do so afterward. He always seemed to enjoy working out, and really, any exercise in moderation will benefit him right now. Unless he asks my input for a specific purpose, I mostly just write down whatever exercises he suggests and remind him that he needs to include balance, flexibility, and range-of-motion exercises along with the strength and stamina building. It's been three weeks, and so far, Miguel has approved every note as written.

So, things are going well, for the most part. Malcolm is on target with his physiotherapy. I am doing my job properly now, and Miguel has stopped riding herd on us as if we were a couple of irresponsible teenagers. 

The problem now is, he _just can't sleep_. 

As long as I've known him he's been a light sleeper, but this is different. His eyes may close, but his body never relaxes, his breathing doesn't deepen, and he tosses and turns throughout the night, kicking away his blankets and fidgeting with the splint on his arm.

I've tried everything. Maybe he's too cold, add a blanket. Too warm? Take one away. Hungry? Try a bedtime snack. Too full? Eat an hour earlier. One evening I spooned with him, to no success. Another night, Ginny came by and talked him through a breathing exercise that I could have predicted wasn't going to work because even the mention of her name when I'm taking his vitals makes his pressure and heart-rate increase. In desperation, I tried a hot toddy one night, made with his preferred whiskey instead of bourbon, and only just a drop of it, and the next night I offered to increase his pain meds.

"I'm not in any pain," he insisted. "And I _don't_ want to be drugged any more than necessary!"

"I won't give you anything," I promised him. "Not without your consent."

"Are you sure you don't want more pain medication?" I ask again tonight as he fusses with his splint.

"No! I told you before, I'm not in pain. It just _bothers_ me," he snaps.

"Is it too tight?"

"No."

"Too loose?"

"No."

I’m running out of options a bit here. "If it's sewn together with nylon threads, having the end of one of them poke you can be pretty irritating…."

"No kidding?" The dry tone and the look he shoots me in the dim light from the various monitors sends a very clear message.

"Ok, I know where I'm not wanted," I tell him resignedly. "If you think of anything I can do to help, just buzz me. I'll be out at the nurse's station."

"No, Liz, please." The whimpering tone was all I needed to hear, as humiliating as it must be for him to use. "I know I’m a pain in the arse, I'm just so bloody tired!"

"All right, if you want me to stay, I'll stay."

Actually, there are two problems. If Malcolm can't sleep, neither can I.

So I sit there on the foot of the bed, massaging his feet, which he really enjoys, and watching him watch me because he's just so tired but can't seem to close his eyes. As I massage deeply into his arch, he groans softly and smiles a bit, then frowns and turns his wrist.

"Malcolm, I'd like to try something," I say.

"Haven't we already tried everything?"

"Not this. I want to take the splint off your wrist."

"I told you it wasn't bothering me." 

"I know, but humor me."

"Oh, fuck it all," he moans. "Do what you want. I'm too tired to care."

I'm seated by his left foot. I have to go halfway around the bed to remove the splint from his right wrist. I'm not even back to my seat when I hear the deep regular breathing of sleep. All the monitors confirm it: he’s out.

I give him about five minutes and then gently and stealthily slip the reversible splint onto his left arm.

Almost instantaneously the slow, even brainwave patterns are disrupted. Less than a minute later he snuffles and snorts and he's awake. And even before he can be really conscious, I see the familiar reflexive jerk of his forearms.

"Noooooo," he moans so plaintively I think he may be close to tears. I feel bad, but I had to do it. "I was asleep! I finally got to _sleep!_ "

"Yes, you were," I call from the other side of the room where I’m rummaging about for an elastic bandage.

"Er, it's on the wrong wrist." He sounds adorable in his groggy confusion as he squints from one arm to the other.

"I know. I was checking something out."

He groans out loud. "Couldn't you have just let me bloody sleep? I was so enjoying that!"

I refrain from pointing out that when you’re asleep you don’t know enough about your mental state to be enjoying it, but I know what he means: sleep is so vital for the proper functioning of the brain that not getting enough of it is literally torture, and if prolonged enough can lead to breakdown and ultimately madness. It’s also essential to physical health. Children require naps because most of the hormones required for growth are released during sleep. As he’s been regaining strength, we’ve worked two naps a day into Malcolm’s schedule because those same hormones are necessary to trigger damaged adult bodies to repair themselves. Being finally ‘plugged into the mains’ for his mental batteries to recharge themselves must have been like drinking water when you’re dying of thirst, and he needs to get plugged back in again as soon as possible.

"Give me five more minutes, and then I think you'll be sleeping in tomorrow." I remove the brace from his left arm and wrap the elastic bandage around his right ankle, taking pains to be sure it's not tight.

For the next ten minutes, he’s miserably awake and his right foot is never still as he keeps rolling his ankle.

"It is the brace," I tell him as I pull a spare pillow out of a cupboard and tuck it in beside him. "But it's not pain or discomfort. It's muscle memory."

"Eh?"

"Your body thinks that a brace is a restraint holding you down." I say as I take his right arm and he lets me gently move it onto the pillow. "Anything around your wrist would have had the same result: a watch, bracelet, rubber band, even a snug shirt sleeve. Your body associates the feeling with being strapped to a table, your stress and anxiety go up, and you can't sleep."

"Really?"

"Yes, really. Maybe that's something you could talk over with Ginny," I suggest as I move to the bottom of the bed and remove the wrap around his foot. "Meanwhile, I’ll discuss an alternative to the brace with Miguel for the times you need to sleep."

He doesn't even hear me mention Miguel. He's already out.

* * *

**Chapter Forty-Three**

**The Knife That Cuts Too Deeply**

_General Malcolm Reed_

The wheelchair.

I hate that fucking wheelchair with a passion. It represents everything that has been done to me, everything that has been taken from me: my strength, my independence, even my capacity to defend myself.

But Commodore Tucker says I can’t manage the distance we need to go, even with the Zimmer frame. He calls this a ‘walker’, as if I am almost a toddler just gearing up for my first steps, but that name for it seems to be an Americanism, because Liz also used it until one day when I gave her it in the neck for infantilising me; so it’s the wheelchair or a shopping trolley, and on the whole I think the wheelchair is slightly less injurious to my dignity.

“It's time you make yourself useful,” he says, with a cheer that makes me want to grind my teeth together. Besides which, the words leave me cold with fear and suspicion. However much I may be beginning to trust him, (and I think I sort of do, just a _little_ more than i did), that word ‘useful’ will always set me on edge now, however harmless the context it’s used in. Still, I try to control the slight, almost reflexive shiver that runs through me, and try to relax and feel less like a condemned prisoner being delivered to the gallows.

My amiable _bête noir_ delivers me to the kitchen, where it seems that a more industrial than commercial operation is taking place. There I meet Mama (Elaine) and Daddy (Charles II) Tucker, the commodore's sister Rachel and his brother Bert. I’m more relieved than I ought to be to find Miguel there, too; the Tuckers are large and loud and strong, and I find them far more overwhelming at close quarters than I’m prepared to admit after so long of being effectively isolated. 

Not that I’m _going_ to admit that. It would feel too much like an admission of weakness and I Admit Nothing.

"This operation only runs if everybody pulls his weight," Tucker tells me, still wearingly cheerful. "We all have to wear a lot of hats, an' Miguel tells me you're strong enough to start earnin' your keep. I'm sure Mama can find somethin' for you to do that'll double as physiotherapy for your wrist." 

He expects me to look happy? Being expected to work in a bloody _kitchen?_

Now that I’m recovering, I’m starting to feel boredom. I’m used to being active when I’m well – as part of the Triad, there wasn’t a second of any available hour when I didn’t have to be ready to respond to any emerging situation. There weren’t many nights when I got a full seven hours’ sleep, and I thrived on constant stimulation, both mentally and physically. I _want_ to be up and doing; honing my thought processes, recovering my manual dexterity.

But _not_ in a kitchen.

OK. I’m not one-third of the effectively most powerful trio in the Empire any more. I’m not in a position to lift one eyebrow and have the lot of them taken out and shot without even a pretence at a trial. But this feels like I’m having my nose rubbed in that unpalatable fact – with violence.

Time was when every last damn one of them would shit themselves if I locked eyes with them, not just glance at me as if I’m something not very interesting and then just carry on with whatever they’re doing. But as it is, that’s what they do, apart from the ‘Hi’ or just a nod when they’re introduced to me.

‘Hi’ or a nod. Lucifer, how the Wheel of Fortune turns.

So I don’t make any attempt to look happy. I know I’m behaving like a petulant child and I don't care. I don’t give a shit if they think I’m an arsehole. As a matter of fact, I don’t give a toss what any of them think. As long as Trip Tucker ‘wants me for something’ they can’t kill me, so that’s the bottom line. Even short of that, doing me any significant harm would presumably set back this plan of his, so I’m safe enough from that too.

“I don’t exactly see myself being particularly _useful_ as a scullery maid in my current condition,” I say sullenly. 

But even the commodore is apparently expected to chip in and help, and therefore so am I. I am promptly introduced to a mound of potatoes large enough to have lasted my mother a month, and she cooked for a family of four. It must be at least the entire contents of a two-and-a-half kilo sack, and from it, I begin to get some idea of the size of Tucker's staff here in the bunker; there's easily enough spuds here to feed more than a dozen people well and allow for seconds. 

Still, I’ve been brought here to be _useful_ , so useful I shall be. Pleasant? No. Sociable? No. But useful – yes, siree, I can do useful. Lucifer knows I’ve had enough bloody practice at that recently.

The peeler isn’t much different from the one Mum used to use. It takes me a couple of swipes to get the hang of not removing strips of skin as well as strips of potato peel, and then I set to, grimly silent. Around me the chatter flows unheeded, a cheerful background irritation which I steadfastly ignore. 

I don’t know if anyone speaks to me. And I don’t care. Frankly, I'd be just as happy if they regarded me as nothing more than an automated appliance and left me alone to do my work.

At first it’s easy enough; peeling potatoes isn’t exactly weight-lifting. But as I work my way through the mountain of tubers, I find my hands getting tired and clumsy. One of the few exercises my imprisonment on that bio-bed allowed was the flexion and extension of my hands, so they’re not nearly as bad as the rest of me, but even so the muscles have lost some of their strength and endurance. My wrist aches, and I’m bored beyond bearing, which doesn’t help.

I have a couple of narrow escapes and try to concentrate, to make my weary fingers stronger and defter than I have the resources for. I manage for a little while, and I’m just thinking to myself with relief that I’ve only a few more of the bloody things to go when my luck runs out. The peeler slips, I’m too sluggish to jerk the swipe aside properly, and the blade sinks into the ball of my thumb.

“Fucking bollocks!”

A small, startled silence falls.

Across the table from me, Mama Tucker lifts her head from contemplating some big lump of dough or something she’s been rolling out for the last five minutes and says, mildly enough, “General Reed, I think language like that is a little more vulgar than the situation justifies.”

I’m bleeding into the water, the cut stings, and I’m having Commodore Fucking Tucker’s mother tell me off like a five-year-old. Momentarily I allow myself to picture her being marched to an Agony Booth, and wonder what she’d say then. I don’t think she’d lecture me by the time she got out.

No siree Bob, she wouldn’t.

But the commodore is very family-minded, and very fond of his Mama. He’s still wearing that bloody cuff, so telling her what I really think might not be the best survival strategy.

“Daft old cow,” I mutter – mostly to myself, really – as I look around for something to dry my hand so I can assess the damage properly.

Then, seemingly out of nowhere, a hefty knife hits the butcher-block table inches from my bleeding hand. 

The loud _thwack_ it makes as the blade pierces the wood is startling enough to make me jump. From the angle at which it’s leaning, the direction the handle is pointing, and my assessment of the other occupants of the room, I can guess who threw it, but I silently curse myself for not having seen it coming. Once upon a time I could have spotted it in my peripheral vision and caught it in mid-flight without interrupting my search for a towel; now I’m lucky I didn't need to duck out of its way, because I’d have been skewered.

 _Of course_ , I’m not the only one who stops what he is doing when Charles Tucker II shoves himself away from the sink and approaches me with all the deliberation of a wolf closing in on a wounded deer. As the others wait for the drama to unfold, I push myself away from the table, instinctively trying to get myself into clear space to face whatever’s coming; I feel the wild dread of being trapped again pour over me, but I don’t turn because I have no escape routes. 

I swallow hard in a dry throat, suddenly remembering that I am not – at the moment – someone to be feared, and from everything I have surmised about Tuckers in general, they are not usually fearful people anyway. Though time was when I could have taught them to be, and though I may have had a promise of good behaviour extracted from me as regards Miguel, the rest of them can be regarded as fair game. And _will_ be, if necessary.

If I survive that long, of course.

'Daddy' Tucker is the mirror image of his son, right down to that odd birthmark in his cheek, or at least he would be if not for Commodore Tucker's radiation-damaged face. Oh, and Daddy is a good fifteen centimetres taller and thirty-five kilos heavier than the commodore, and none of it is the soft bulk that a man his age normally starts to put on as he slows down in his golden years, either. 

He doesn't try to use his size to intimidate me; he doesn't need to. I suspect it happens naturally so often that he has come to expect it as a given, and as much as I would like to say that he doesn't scare me, it would be a lie. In my current condition, I doubt I could give him a run for his money in a shouting match, let alone survive any kind of physical confrontation with this great bear of a man. So I stay very quiet and still in my wheelchair as he comes up and squats beside me.

Even with him down on my level, I feel as if he could squash me like an insect.

"Daddy…" the commodore begins warningly.

"Shut it, Trip," the older man commands quietly, and 'Trip' shuts it, just like that.

"You know who I am, don't you, son?" he asks with terrible gentleness.

I nod silently, staring straight ahead at the knife – which, I notice, is somewhat sturdier and has a completely different handle to any of the kitchen cutlery – as if even the sound of my voice might be enough to tip him from angry but controlled to outright psychotic. 

"Where I come from, it's rude not to look at your elders when they're talkin' to you, an' downright disrespectful not to speak your answer when they ask you a question."

I swallow audibly, and decide I'll wait till later to be embarrassed by that, and I turn to look at the big man. It’s an effort to hold his gaze, but I manage it; at least his is human, and not bright blue.

"Yes, sir, I know who you are." I can't remember the last time I called anyone 'sir', but I don't dare _not_ do it now. And back when I was young, calling a male adult ‘sir’ was an indicator of my polite manners, not of my opinion of the male in question. I hold on to that reflection. It helps me to speak civilly rather than allowing the fear I feel to seep into my voice.

Furthermore, I may be weak and I may be pretty well defenceless, but I’m a Reed. Reeds die with their heads high, and so I keep mine up and face him.

"Good," he nods, and still talking in that slow velvet voice, he points to each of the others in the kitchen, one at a time, and says, "Then you know that Trip an' Bert are my sons, Rachel is my daughter, an' Miguel is as much my son as any of the boys I fathered. 

"Now those four, I've taught 'em the best I could. They're grown an' independent, an' they're not my responsibility anymore. They want my help with anything, all they gotta do is ask, but I'm not buttin' in uninvited. So if they got a problem with you, they'll handle it when an' how they see fit. Unless they ask me to do somethin' about it, I won't interfere, understand?"

"Yes, sir," I say quietly. I feel like I'm back in my ordnance disposal days, defusing an explosive with a mercury switch for a trigger. Handle it carefully, move it smoothly, and keep it level, and everything will be fine. One wrong move, though – jolt it, jar it, tilt it or tip it – and the liquid metal flows over the contacts, completing the circuit. Then it's BOOM! _Look, Mum, no hands!_ if you're lucky.

"Elaine, on the other hand, is my wife," he says, indicating the one person he has so far left out. She has turned away from the pastry board and the dough to join the rest of the company in watching this exchange between her husband and me, and the knowledge that my coming humiliation is to be made public Tucker property runs up and down my spine like a hot itch; it sends darts of fire into a memory I’ve buried so deep that even I barely remember it, and the cool white shapes of windflowers crystallise around the image of him on my retinas. "More'n forty years ago, we made some promises to each other. Now, I don't know what it's like where you come from, but as far as I'm concerned, 'to love, honor, an' cherish,' includes not lettin' little shits like you run her down. Is that clear?"

"Perfectly, sir."

He continues staring stonily at me, as if expecting something more, but for the life of me – and I get the feeling that particular figure of speech might just be a bit more literal than it usually is – I don't know what else to say or do. The knowledge that my grip on sanity is slipping is no comfort; the haft of the knife is pulsing redly in my peripheral sight, as if calling me to make a grab for it, and while the sane side of me knows that I wouldn’t stand a snowball’s chance of getting to it before Charles Tucker II does, the other half doesn’t care.

My pride is being lacerated. It feels as if I’ve been thrown into a vat of acid. My sheer helplessness roils in my gut like a poison I can’t vomit up.

Our dear commodore wants me for something, that’s plain. So _theoretically_ he won’t let Tucker Senior kill me. But short of that, it seems that public humiliation in front of his entire family is something he has no objection to allowing me to endure.

It would appear he values his father’s opinion more than he does mine. This may well prove rather unfortunate next time he tries to make me ‘co-operative’...

It feels as if the whole room is balanced on the edge of that knife with me, all of them holding their collective breath anticipating whatever happens next. I feel my heart rate accelerating and the air seems to be growing thin. It's a wonder my physician doesn't step in and scold the elder Tucker for stressing me.

Whatever is happening here, it certainly is not a stare-down. A stare-down requires an act of defiance and a simultaneous act of subjugation. This is just the Tucker _paterfamilias_ watching me, waiting for something I can't give because I don't know what it is, and me, knowing better than to look away before I am dismissed.

At this point, my mind gives way.

It feels like something fractures, literally, inside my head. I’m no longer inside a busy kitchen. The air I suck into my lungs is sour with fear-sweat and pain-sweat, and the rank odour of wolves.

_–HungerDiePainFearDieHungerWantNeedLive–_

_I stare up into implacable blue eyes. I want to curse, I want to spit defiance, but more than that I want to live. And for that, I must acknowledge defeat._

_I can hardly move. I’m sick and weak with hunger, and the pain shoots up my leg from my broken paw in ragged, rhythmic pulses in time to my heartbeat. But letting myself fall is easier than trying to keep myself upright like a man, and so I do it, and roll over on the hard ground, whimpering my submission and exposing my vulnerable belly so that I will be allowed to live, allowed to eat, allowed to survive._

The sounds around me make no sense to my broken brain at first. They are voices, but they are the voices of wolves, and only slowly do I begin to pick out words. They are loud, and by the tone probably ones of shock and concern, but since they are not uttered by the one person on whom my survival depends they pass through my awareness, leaving no mark upon it.

The man who stares down at me cowering and begging for mercy stares from behind a superimposed furry mask.

I have surrendered. I do not try to understand or to impose conditions. I am Pack now. I will be obedient.

The deep voice comes from behind the mask. _"This is my mess. I'll clean it up."_

I can only whimper like a frightened puppy as he lifts me effortlessly back into the chair and starts giving orders, and it becomes abundantly clear who's in charge now. Commodore Tucker may be one of the most powerful men in the Imperial Fleet, if not the Empire, but Charles is Head of the Tucker clan. "Trip, finish washin' the dishes for me, an' then help your mama." 

"Look, Dad, maybe I should..." 

"Miguel, if you're here doin' what you've been asked to do, I'll know where to find you if I need you." Looking around, he asks his eldest son, "Where can I take him?"

"The dining room is safe, but the only way you can leave there is to come back through the kitchen." 

"Fine. Bert, fetch me my apple jack an' a couple of glasses." 

"Dad, he really shouldn't..." 

"Miguel, so help me God, son... Look, we all know you're a brilliant an' dedicated doctor, but it's not your medicine he needs right now. Sometimes, treatin' a man like a patient just makes him sicker. Is one drink gonna hurt him?" 

"No, sir." 

"Then one, an' only one, drink it will be." Bert hands Charles a quart jar of an amber liquid and a pair of whiskey glasses. I whine softly as he tucks them in beside me. 

I am bizarrely aware of my animal behaviour, and yet unable to stop it. It feels quite simply as though I have forgotten how to react in any human way. I understand now that the people around us are human, and I know who they are and understand their language, but my own humanity is as far beyond my reach as it was back in the laboratory, when the regimen began that was to drag me, biting and snarling, back to some version of normality.

Through the silence, I am wheeled into the dining room, and the door is closed behind me and my new alpha.

My wheelchair is parked up carefully beside a green leather sofa along one wall. He fetches over one of the dining chairs, puts it in front of me and places the two whisky glasses on it. Then he pours a generous measure of the amber liquid into each.

I look at them silently. I cannot eat or drink without permission.

He picks one up and hands it to me. I wrap my paws around it and glance at him. 

He nods, picking up his own glass.

The tumbler is quite narrow, and I am afraid of dropping it and earning punishment. So I try to be as careful as I can as I tilt it so that the amber liquid inside runs within reach of my tongue.

Over the months I grew deft at lapping, but that was from pools and streams. The edge of the glass knocks against my teeth as I try to manoeuvre my mouth to get better access for my tongue, and the small sound scares me. I do not know what may draw down this new alpha’s wrath upon me.

“Malcolm.” His eyes are steady beyond the top of his own glass.

I blink. If he wishes to call me Malcolm, that is what I will answer to. Unfortunately I have no tail, or the very tip of it would wag propitiatingly under my belly.

“Put that down just a minute.”

I have managed to get a little of the liquid onto my tongue and it tastes good. But I know better than to disobey. 

_Submit and survive._

Carefully I set down the glass. I let my tongue flick lightly around my lips, so that I appear grateful and hopeful.

“Come here.” He points to the floor beside him.

However weak and tired and afraid I may be, and however confused I am, resistance is not an option. Hoping that if I am prompt enough I will be allowed to drink the rest of the liquid afterwards, I slide out of the wheelchair again to my knees.

Direct eye contact is a challenge that I dare not issue. I flicker nervous glances up at him, looking down again immediately to show that I am simply waiting for orders and trying to understand my situation. His gaze does not seem hostile, merely thoughtful and a little troubled.

The movement of his hand frightens me, though I control my instinctive jerk away; if he wishes to touch me I must allow it.

He reaches out slowly, and I freeze as he cups his massive hand around the back of my head. It had not occurred to me before, but it darts into my mind that he may have a very specific form of domination in mind, now that we are alone and I am submissive.

_Submit and survive._

But he does not begin to pull me in close. Instead, his hand begins to stroke my hair, a steady, rhythmic gesture that I find at first acutely unnerving. But he continues with it until presently it becomes not just unthreatening, but actually surprisingly soothing. 

He doesn’t speak for some time, but when he does his voice is low and quiet. “I’ll tell you now, General, when Trip first told us the risk he was takin' to get you out of the trouble you were in, I didn’t understand it. ‘Cause you did some pretty awful shit when you had the power, an’ I won’t soon forget watchin’ that guy die by inches with you cuttin’ him to death. I don’t think any man with a decent bone in his body wasn’t sickened by what you did that day.”

Thoughts ricochet and collide in my brain, fracture and re-form like the colours in a kaleidoscope. White and green, green and white, smelling of crushed grass and sweat and fear. Memory is welling up from the depths like vomit.

“When I came here I expected to find a monster,” the deep voice continues. “A broken monster, but a monster just the same. I’ll be honest, I thought Trip was just plain crazy tryin’ to turn you.”

_They held me down, pinned by the wrists and ankles so I couldn’t struggle. I was so naïve I didn’t even realise why they were stripping me, apart from having a laugh. God help me, I found out soon enough._

“But now you’re here an' I’m not so sure about you. You’re broken, right enough, but I’m startin’ to think you were broken long before you got the power you did. You were broken, an’ you’ve used the power ever since to make sure no-one will ever hurt you that much ever again.”

My forehead is resting against his muscular thigh, and I am not at all sure how it came to be there. I hardly recognise and cannot control the sounds that burst out of my throat, but the vomit is spewing into the light on a torrent of sobs and snarls.

I have never told anyone, not even Alpha, what happened to me that day back in the grounds of Nottingham Old Hall. In my right mind, I would probably never have allowed it close enough to the surface of my thoughts to be articulated, let alone spoken of. But suspended above the abyss of madness as I am now, the floodgates open.

Charles Tucker II now holds my sanity in his cupped palm like a soap-bubble.

He does not interrupt, or attempt to check the flow. When I pause for breath, or in the attempt to pull the flayed edges of skin back over my exposed lacerations, he quietly repeats what I have told him, shorn of emotion. Names, acts, sensations, words, reactions – everything I’ve managed so successfully to bury, even from myself. Sometimes the rhythmic movement of his hand pauses just fractionally, but it starts again and goes on, until finally I have retched out everything that has poisoned me ever since and simply hang there, shuddering and spent.

There is a long pause, while his hand goes on stroking. Finally, “Lift your head, son.”

I’m not sure if I have the strength. My knees are literally shaking with the effort of simply supporting my pelvis, and there’s no way I have the power left now in my upper body to kneel upright, but I must obey an order, and so I lift my forearms and place them gingerly on the thigh at either side of my head. Using them for leverage, I raise my face to view, a sodden, sorry, snotty mess for his inspection.

From somewhere he produces a clean handkerchief and wipes it. The instruction to blow my nose takes me back more years than I care to remember, but the simple, tender action is a healing one, offering me a fragile lifeline back to humanity.

He clearly understands that my strength is at an end. He lifts me again, but not back into my wheelchair. Instead he places me on the sofa beside him, and hands me my glass.

I go to place my paws around it, but he stops me gently. “Take it like the man you are, son.”

I search around the fragments of thought available to me, turning them over carefully to inspect them. Finally I find the action that is required. It’s probably just as well that the glass is only half full, because between my mental and physical exhaustion, my hand is trembling, my control of it only tenuous. But I manage to get the tumbler to my mouth.

Instincts war.

Finally I manage to tip it.

My tongue is trying to be in the right place and do the right things, but isn’t sure what these are. My hand doesn’t help much either, sending far too much liquid into the fray at once. Frankly it’s a wonder I don’t spit and dribble and choke on the strong, apple-flavoured alcohol, but somehow I gulp most of it down, and only some escapes, dripping down my chin like 80-proof drool.

The burn of the applejack in my stomach steadies me. In a couple of increasingly better co-ordinated gulps I get the rest of it down, though the way the world begins to swoop around me is a reminder that dropping this lot onto an empty stomach probably wasn’t the cleverest thing I ever did.

With a shaky sigh, I lower the now empty glass and hold it against my belly. For want of anything better to do in the void in which I find myself, I study the incisions in it, running my thumb idly along them. The man beside me is drinking his own alcohol, though in smaller and much better-managed swallows, and the silence is oddly companionable.

Maybe later I will begin to feel and have to deal with the ramifications of what I have said and done. But for now I feel strangely cleansed, almost as though I have indeed vomited the curdled contents of a sick stomach; though a sick soul may be far less easy to empty and treat.

When Charles has finished his drink he takes my glass from me and sets both of them back on the dining chair. Then, with a huge simplicity, he turns to me, takes my face between his hands, and kisses me on the forehead.

Before I can deal with this, almost before I can comprehend it, he pulls me in and presses my face into his shoulder.

“I know you’ve a family of your own, son,” he says quietly. “But there’s never a family so big there’s no room for another in it, an’ if the time comes when you want to be one of us, the invitation’s there.

“An’ I’ll say one more thing. I’m guessin’ you’ve said things here today that you’ve never been able to say to anyone before. If that’s the case, it must have been almost more than you could bear to do that, an’ I’m glad for your sake you’ve finally found a way to let out all that dreadful pain you’ve been carryin’ all these years from what those bastards did to you.

“It probably wouldn't hurt for you to talk it over with Ginny someday, but you'll do that in your own time, or not, whatever suits you. Either way, I swear on everythin’ I hold dear, there’s no-one else will ever hear a word of anythin’ you’ve confided in me. You can rest easy on that.”

At first my hands are flattened against his broad chest, defensively holding us apart. But slowly they separate and creep around his body, and I sink into the hug.

I have embraced many bodies in my time – mostly by way of holding them still while I used them. Now and again, particularly recently, I’ve experienced some hugs that took me back to my childhood, and some that offered a strange extension of my affection for Liz. But none to date have enveloped me in quite the same sense of protection and peace as I experience now.

He does not move. He waits patiently until I draw back, and pats me lightly on the shoulder to show that he accepts my wish to put some distance between us again.

“Reckon we ought to go back to the others before Trip an’ Miguel start organisin’ a rescue party,” he says with a slow smile. “But before we go, there’s one thing we need to get settled.”

“My disrespect to your wife,” I admit, low-voiced.

A nod. “I’m sure your daddy wouldn’t have stood for you or your sister not respectin’ his lady wife, an’ I won’t stand by an' see anyone not respectin’ mine. Son, general, or the Empress herself, if they come into my house they’ll treat her as she deserves to be treated, or I’ll know the reason why.”

“I was wrong. I’m sorry.”

“I appreciate you sayin’ that, son, but it’s not me you need to say it to. Now, General, I’ll give you a hand to get into that chair o’ yours an' then we’ll go back into the kitchen an’ start over, with a better understandin’ between us from now on.”

He’s perfectly right, of course. I accept his help to get back into my wheelchair, and he pushes me back into the kitchen, where faces turn as if expecting to see black eyes and bruises. No doubt they see evidence on mine that the intervening time has not been easy on me, but they’re tactful enough not to say anything about it.

I was in the wrong. As a Reed, I have to keep my head up and act in the manner in which I was raised.

Clearing my throat, I turn to his wife.

"Ma’am…"

"You can call her Mrs. Tucker," I'm told gruffly.

"Yes, sir," I agree with a glance in his direction. "Mrs. Tucker, I am genuinely sorry for my foul language and appalling behaviour. It's bad enough to be sullen in good company, but to be disrespectful of you is inexcusable. I hope you can forgive me."

"Of course I do, sweetheart," she says immediately, and, I must admit, with more warmth and sincerity than I’ve any right to expect. "Trip hasn't shared any of the details, but we all know you've been through a really rough patch. Charlie won't admit it, but _he_ acts like a bear with a sore head when he's under the weather. An' if Mrs. Tucker’s a mite formal for you, call me Elaine, if you want. I'm givin' you _my_ permission, an' not even Charlie Tucker will argue with that, if he wants to eat tonight."

The Tucker in question grunts at that and pulls his knife out of the table. I see him slip it into his sleeve as he goes back to the sink where he was washing dishes.

"Now, you seem to have hurt yourself," she continues. "Will you let me have a look?"

"I can do that, Mama," Miguel says, taking a step or two in our direction.

"You just finish shreddin' that cabbage for coleslaw, Miguel," she says sharply. "I'll bet he's just sick to death of your hoverin' as it is. The day I can't handle a little kitchen first aid, you can put me in the old folks' home, but until then, I am the boss in any room that holds my family and a cookstove."

"I-It's fine, really," I assure her, tucking my injured thumb into my fist and shoving it down in the corner between my hip and the side of my wheelchair.

The look she gives me, while completely nonthreatening, is no less stern and businesslike than her husband's oppressive glare. Knowing when I am defeated, I comply immediately.

"It doesn't hurt that much," I try telling her.

"Maybe not now, but if you don't wash those potato starch crystals out of that wound, it'll be sore for days," she says. "Besides, you're bleedin', an' I'm not havin' your blood in my scalloped potatoes. Trip can finish peelin' an' slicin' them when he's done makin' the dressin' for the slaw."

She fetches a large bowl of warm water and has me soak my hand while she brings out the first aid kit and prepares a plaster with some antibiotic ointment. Then she dons sterile gloves, adds a squirt of antiseptic soap to the water and gently washes my cut. When she is satisfied that all the potato starch must be out of the wound, she has me place my hand on a clean, dry towel that she has laid out for me and pats the area around the cut dry with a gauze pad. She uses a cotton swab to apply some anaesthetic first aid cream, and finally applies the plaster.

Then, seemingly without a thought, she places a quick, motherly kiss on it.

I'm so surprised my jaw drops open and I grunt softly. Commodore Tucker, who is fortunately the only one in a position to see what she's just done, gasps quietly.

She spares him only the most perfunctory of glances, and then looks me square in the eye.

"Sorry about that, General," she tells me. "After six children an' four grandbabies, so far, kissin' it better has become such a part of the routine I guess I do it without thinkin'."

She favours me with a gentle smile, and all I can think to do is smile back. "No need to apologise," I tell her. "It feels much better now. Thank you."

Now that I feel more comfortable – if chastened – I would like to stay here rather than be wheeled back to the lonely, boring isolation of my room. Obviously peeling potatoes is now out of the frame, so I ask if there is anything else I could do.

Mrs. Tucker thinks for a moment, and then asks me to fold the napkins, listing off the people who will be dining with us. There will be twelve of us there, myself included (rather to my surprise): the commodore, Mr. and Mrs. Tucker, Bert, Miguel, Rachel, Liz, Amanda Cole, me, and three unknowns whom Mrs. Tucker refers to merely as 'the boys'. 

Rachel wheels me into the dining room and while she sets the dishes out, I sit at one end of the table and begin folding the crisp linen squares into elegant bird-of-paradise flowers.

She stops suddenly, staring at me.

I’m still a little wary of strangers, even Tucker strangers, so I freeze. "What? Have I done something wrong?"

She takes a step forward, studying my handiwork. "No, but we usually just make a little pocket to hold the silverware."

"Ah." I start to unfold the one I’m working on, but she puts out a hand and says quickly, "Don't change anything! Mama'll like it."

I have to admit, if only to myself, that the thought of making Mrs. Tucker smile pleases me.

"I just wouldn't have expected you to…well…"

"What? Have any appreciation for elegance, grace, and style?" I finish a little ironically when she trails off.

"Well, that, an', honestly, the knowledge and skill to make somethin' like that," she answers ingenuously.

For some reason this sparks a memory. 

"It's something my mother taught me," I say, not sure why I want to share part of myself with her; perhaps confiding is dangerously addictive, though this is hardly on a par with what I revealed to her father earlier. "We moved around a lot when I was a child, because of my father's work, and one of her ways of making friends in the neighbourhood was to throw themed dinner parties or invite the lady neighbours to a fancy luncheon. It was my job to fold the napkins. One time, she threw a garden party. I learned to make these, and rosebuds, blooming roses, water lilies, tulips, daylilies and something that resembled an apple blossom."

I laugh then, when another memory comes back to me.

"When we spent a year in Australia, she joined the opera society. They held a dinner meeting at our house. I did my best to create the Sydney Opera House, but it looked more like a defective armadillo."

"So, it was an almost perfect likeness," she quips, with that same mischievous grin I’ve sometimes seen on her brother.

"Oh, most definitely…"

She goes back to the table-setting and I go back to the napkins, but the silence between us is comfortable.

It will need long hours in solitude and probably more than one conversation with Doctor East for me to even begin to process what has happened, but this has been an extraordinary evening.

* * *

**Chapter Forty-Four**

**Therapy Note**

_Doctor Virginia East_

**_Begin Recording_** <<It's nothing short of astonishing, the progress Patient X is making in some aspects of his recovery. I'm sure much of it has to do with the confidence he is gaining as his physical condition improves. When a man navigates the world by annihilating everyone and everything that opposes, annoys, or even merely inconveniences him, strength and stamina are of the essence. He practices willingly enough all of the anxiety reducing techniques I have taught him, from any of a half dozen different breathing techniques to progressive muscle relaxation, stretching, the use of pressure points, guided imagery, and even mantras and affirmations. Once a week, we pick an emotion from the list I had him write after our first 'real' session, and he tells me about a time when he felt that emotion, explains how he masked it with anger, and describes how he could have, and might in the future, allow himself to feel the actual emotion and cope with it appropriately.

<<In other ways, I'm not sure we're getting anywhere at all. For one thing, I'm still not convinced that he's genuinely engaged rather than just going through the motions, but even 'faking it' does require him to think about alternate coping strategies, regardless of whether he has any plans to actually implement them. Many, perhaps a majority, of my patients never intend to use the strategies they learn and discuss in therapy. Then they have an incident, a crisis usually, where they exhaust their customary unhealthy techniques, discover that none of them seem to help, and in a last ditch effort to hold it together, try something we have practiced in therapy and find it works.

<<He's also still incredibly wary, anxious, and utterly paranoid about being mocked, taunted, disrespected, or humiliated. I still think he'd prefer a physical assault to being shamed, though I'm certainly not going to do either. And for all that he's willing to talk about incidents in his past where he's covered his true emotions with anger, lashed out, and destroyed the source of his emotional discomfiture, he still won't talk about anything that comes close to touching on any of his, what I am sure are multiple, traumas.

<<The commander of this facility has been content so far with my regular assurances that we _are_ making progress, that Patient X is building a toolbox of strategies to help him handle the distress he will undoubtedly feel when he begins to confront his traumatic past. But with every stride my patient makes in his physical recovery, every meter he walks beyond what he managed the day before, every additional kilo he lifts, he becomes more dangerous to the commander of this facility and all of us who work here; and I worry what will become of my patient should the commander decide that his psychological progress is lagging too far behind his physical recovery and he has become too much of a liability due to his continued mental instability.

<<Disturbingly, the two psychotic episodes I know of and the intermittent canine delusions aren't even the most troubling aspects of this patient's treatment. Bizarre as it may seem, here and now, while he is surrounded by people who seem willing and able to indulge these episodes without judgment, they are coping behaviors that actually _work_. Of course he'll have to learn to control them before he goes back out into the world again, or he'll be dead the first time he has a break, but for now, it's just an aberrant behavior that lets him escape his reality when it becomes too intense.

<<The thing that troubles me most about this patient isn't even a tangible matter. It's just a feeling I have, a sense of foreboding, and though I am loath to act without empirical data informing my decisions, it may become necessary in this case. With every small breakthrough, every catharsis, every up, down, and left turn, every psychotic break and minor crisis, I feel like there is something more, something bigger, bubbling just beneath the surface. I constantly feel as though I am waiting for yet another shoe to drop, and I suspect his troubles are legion.

<<Interestingly, though, a recent event that one would reasonably have expected to cause Patient X a considerable setback, has actually led to significant improvement in his emotional stability and his interactions with others. The patient's Care Team has gained a new _de facto_ member, whom I will call Senior hereafter, and Senior's influence over the past week or so has been arguably greater than even that of the primary caregiver, for whom Patient X has, perhaps unwittingly, begun displaying some vestiges of genuine affection. To the complete frustration of the entire team, Senior refuses to participate in any meetings, refuses to divulge anything about his interactions with the patient, and won't even submit notes for our edification. He insists that he wants only to be the patient's friend, even though I'm quite certain he knows to the precise degree how much easier he could make our work if he'd only provide us with a little information and encourage the patient to try a little harder to cooperate with us.

<<Bewilderingly, Senior gained his influential status with the patient only after an episode in which he threatened physical violence and frightened him so badly that the patient suffered a complete psychotic break in front of multiple witnesses. After removing the patient to a private area, he managed to talk the patient down, bring him back to reality, and calm him to the point where he was able to face the audience that had witnessed his breakdown, apologize for the inappropriate behavior that had provoked the initial threat of violence, and _more_ than willingly - _at his own request,_ in fact - remain among those who had witnessed his vulnerability throughout the preparation and consumption of the evening meal. I strongly suspect that Senior's methods (which I understand included a kiss on the forehead and a shot of apple jack) would have cost any licensed psychologist his or her livelihood; but when my patient sat before me the next day looking calmer and more confident that I had ever seen him, _willingly_ telling me about the encounter because Senior had suggested it might be a good idea, something about ‘ends and means’ came to mind and I decided to overlook the unconventional therapy. Of course, Senior wasn't specific about _how much_ he thought my patient should tell me, so an hour long encounter which included a thirty to forty-five minute private conversation was condensed into a two-minute monologue which I suspect, if he had tried a little harder, my patient could have delivered in a single breath.

<<The first time I approached Senior about his initial encounter with Patient X he would only tell me that I'd have to ask the patient about it, that he had promised he would keep everything about their interaction confidential. The second time I asked, he threatened to take me over his knee if I pestered him again, and having known Senior my entire life, I determined at that moment that I should not ask him a third time. However, the fact that the initial encounter has led to a nightly ritual of drinks and conversation after the evening meal that (as several team members have noticed) gets them out of any clean-up chores, makes me even more curious to know what they discuss. I don't believe my patient has yet recovered the capacity to feign interest so late in the day _and_ with alcohol in his system. If he wasn't genuinely engaged with Senior, his behavior and expressions would reveal his pretense.

<<With regard to the other witnesses of the initial event, i would ordinarily be concerned that they might divulge even minor details of it outside the family - a development that could have far-reaching and potentially catastrophic consequences. I can guess that were the patient in his previous position of unchallenged power, they would all have been imprisoned or perhaps even killed to prevent even the possibility of their disclosing having witnessed an episode so damaging to his dignity and supposed invincibility. It would be all too easy, on seeing the patient in what was undoubtedly an extremely vulnerable state, to mistakenly think he was therefore less dangerous; the truth is that in the long term he is a greater danger to them than ever, simply because of what they have seen. However, it would seem that the individuals concerned are not only trustworthy in themselves but have been strenuously warned not to discuss the episode even among themselves, and certainly not with anyone else. If they did so and so much as a whisper of it reached his ears, his trust in Senior, in the Commander of the Facility, and probably also in me would be irretrievably damaged. Without doubt, if he ever regained his freedom, one of his first acts would be to take revenge for what he would perceive as a heinous and unforgivable betrayal.

<<So I have been gently, carefully, and oh, so patiently probing my patient about the incident and their subsequent conversations. I do not delude myself into thinking that he occasionally 'lets something slip' during our encounters. My patient is far too clever for that. When he provides the rare, informative answer to one of my questions, I know it is because he has decided it is either something with which I can be trusted, or nothing of any consequence. Regardless of whether he answers me, though, I continue to ask, because simply hearing the question forces him to consider the answer, whether he shares it or not; and the key to helping this patient who keeps so much so close to the vest will be in making him _think_ , not necessarily in getting him to _talk. >> **End Recording.** _

* * *

**Chapter Forty-Five**

**Analysis**

_General Malcolm Reed_

I don't know if Ginny has no clue how much she sometimes telegraphs her intent, doesn't care, or is doing it deliberately with the possible goal of giving me a moment to prepare myself for her questions. I _do_ know that every time she wants to talk about my interactions with Commodore Tucker's father, her demeanour changes and she very obviously reverts to her Southern roots, so much so that I realize service in the Fleet has actually significantly softened the commodore's accent. She begins by dropping her _g_ 's and the _d_ 's on her _and_ 's, then throws in a few idioms, a little bit of bad grammar (which by contrast leads me to realize that the commodore's grammar is very nearly perfect despite the _Aw, shucks!_ backward, naïve country boy persona he sometimes tries to sell when he's trying to charm something out of someone) and by the end of the session I'm getting the full, flat Florida drawl, complete with food analogies (often burned or buttered biscuits, which I have learned are a sort of hybrid of a bap and a croissant, leavened without yeast) and references to inept, poorly trained or unhygienic animals or their parts.

To her credit, she doesn't badger me, but does (as she said she would) regularly ask me about my conversations with Charles Tucker II. She generally seems far less interested in the dialogue than she is in how and why I have found it agreeable to speak with him, and particularly today, in what influence he has on me and why I allow it. Sometimes I answer her and sometimes I don't, but I always find myself dwelling on her questions, and, as I gradually improve my stamina, I find they sometimes keep me awake at night – at least for the few minutes I am able to resist the siren call of sleep after I lie down and the lights go out.

"Has Mr. Charlie given you any advice that you've found helpful?"

And then there's _that_ little peculiarity. I'm curious, and her question's innocuous enough. "I'll answer that, if you answer a question for me."

She studies me speculatively, which I have to say I find rather encouraging, and says, "I guess that'll have to depend on the question. What do you want to know?"

I still have it in me to be quite a bastard and I think, if she'd agreed without thinking it over, I might have just forgotten about the thing I want to know and asked something so lewd and insulting she'd tell me to go fuck myself and end our session early, just to teach her a lesson. But she has taken a moment to think it over, so when she agrees, she deserves a legitimate question, not a query designed to piss her off.

"Why do you call him Mr. Charlie?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"When you talk about Commodore Tucker's father, you call him Mr. Charlie." I point out the obvious, wondering if she's not even fully aware of it. "Well, his name is Charles Tucker II. Forty years ago, he was honourably discharged from the Fleet as TS Tucker. His wife calls him Charlie, and his children call him Dad. I imagine most of his friends and neighbours call him Charles or Charlie, as do most of his colleagues in the Florida Citrus Grower's Co-op. Though I suppose, some of the members of the co-op as well as the various vendors and buyers with whom he does business might also call him Mr. Tucker depending on how familiar and friendly they are."

I give her this long explanation rather than simply repeating my question as a way of letting her know that I've learned a bit about the man in question. In a sense, I guess I'm throwing her a bone, a small reward for her diligence through these several weeks of my being alternately a miserable bastard, a co-operative patient, and, for lack of a more concise and accurate descriptor, an emotional and psychological train wreck.

“I mean, the way we address the people in our lives points towards our relationships with them, don't you think?"

"I suppose so," she agrees with a nod. "So, are you sayin' you're wantin’ to know how I'm related to him?"

"Well, I know you're _not_ actually related to him," I say. "You've told me yourself that you and the commodore are old friends, so maybe it's more like, What _is_ your relationship to him?"

"Well, down home they call it ‘dog kin’," she tells me easily.

I've gone hot and cold all over. I have no idea what expression my face is making or if or how I should change it; it feels like a wooden mask. What does she know? She's seen me revert, and I told her myself about the incident in the kitchen on the day I met my new … my new Alpha; but nothing in my behaviour, as bizarre as I'm sure it seemed to her and everyone else, could have pointed toward the Wolf Planet and the way those brutes fucked with my mind, what I endured while I was being conditioned there – could it? What, if anything, has Charles told her? He promised to keep what I told him confidential, but he’s certainly under no obligation to do so. After I submitted to him, the only way I could possibly compel him to do or to refrain from anything would be to challenge him, and that's not likely to happen as long as I’m here. Any challenge would have to be a fight to the death, and even if I _did_ win (which in my current condition is far from a certainty, even if I was armed and he wasn’t), Commodore Tucker would undoubtedly see to it that I didn't survive long enough to see what lies beyond this bunker.

By now I've been fretting quite long enough over _what_ Ginny might know and _how_ she knows it for her to have realized something about what she said has resonated with me, but she doesn't address it, at least not yet. She's actually very good about not pouncing when I reveal more than I intend, and I appreciate it. She doesn't let me get by without discussing things, but she does allow me time to compose myself before she presses me for more information.

"‘Dog kin’?" I finally manage.

Her eyes are bright as a hawk's as she studies me briefly, and then says, "In the old-fashioned sense, of course, not the modern."

I don't mind letting her see how bewildered I am, and I'm relieved to feel my expression changing to broadcast this emotion. There's no shame in being confused by hearing an idiom one has never encountered before, particularly when one learns that it has both a current and an outdated meaning when it actually makes no fucking sense at all. It's possibly as much as half a minute before I even know what to say.

"I'm sorry, but I’ve never heard that phrase before," I finally admit. "What in bloody hell does it mean?"

"Don't worry about it, Malcolm," she says with a chuckle. "The modern usage is not widely known outside psychology an' the subculture who have adopted it to describe themselves. The former usage is actually more, well, archaic, I suppose, except among certain rural, more traditional populations.

" _Dog kin_ , as it's usually used now, is one of many subcultures fallin' under the umbrella term _otherkin_ , to describe people who genuinely believe they are other species, fictional or imaginary characters, or sometimes inanimate objects trapped in human form."

All I can do is laugh aloud – even if my throat feels uncomfortably tight as I do so – and say, "That's absolutely absurd!"

Only when she sighs and shrugs do I realize she was giving me the opportunity to open up to her about my more unusual behaviours. Well, fuck _that_ for a lark! I feel my smile fade and give her a hard glare. I may be a long way from what most people would probably define as ‘normal’, but I'm not so deluded as to think I'm some bloody cur trapped in a man's body. I'm a man, a _Human being_ , who was exposed to psychoactive compounds for an extended period of time while being brutally abused and humiliated by a pack of sentient brutes. I was conditioned to be a ruthless, cunning killer, and a loyal, biddable servant to anyone who had the power to command me. I even submitted to being physically mounted by the alpha wolf as a dominance display, because to refuse would have been the equivalent of signing my own death warrant.

I don't revert to Pack behaviours when I'm under extreme stress because I _want_ to hide away in some ridiculous canine alter-ego. It happens because, after what I went through on Wolf Planet Mindfuck, I was left with a switch inside me that sometimes flips when I become overwhelmed. My humanity slips away from me like a dissolving fog and I'm left with the same stark clarity that kept me from dying on that cursed world: _Submit and survive_ , fight and kill if you want to advance. I'm not ashamed of using those lessons to work my way up to becoming one of the most powerful men in the Empire. Nor am I ashamed, now, of how I fall into the submissive behaviours when I feel threatened by an enemy I can't defeat; only a fool would openly challenge a rival he knew he could not beat. I am, however, frightened and horribly humiliated by how terribly vulnerable I become each time I do submit, for submission is, in fact, throwing oneself on the mercy of another, and those who are as merciful as Charles Tucker II are few and far between. 

By now, Ginny has clocked me thinking about my conditioning, how it has helped me and how it makes me vulnerable, and I don't bloody care. I'm not going to discuss it with her, not ever. I understand it, and that's enough. 

"It's just completely fucked up," I tell her flatly, just in case ‘absolutely absurd’ isn’t emphatic enough. It's sufficient to cover both how I feel about what was done to me and what I think about these nutters who think they're anything other than what their physical forms would indicate; and hopefully it's enough to tell Ginny that I'm not ready to open up about my episodes.

"Well, it exists nonetheless," she replies casually. "An' since I've never really studied the literature, observed, treated, or even knowin'ly met someone who identified as ‘otherkin’, I'll resist the temptation to judge whether it's a natural state of bein' for some folks, an illness, or an attention-seekin' behavior, an' stick with callin' it ‘unusual’. Though I suppose, as with most things, it has a lot to do with the individual in question."

"I can see how it would," I agree. "So, what did _you_ mean, when you used the term _dog kin_?"

" _Dog kin_ , the way we use it down home, refers to family that ain't related by blood or law."

I think about this a moment, and reply, "You're talking about friends."

"No! Friends ain't nothin' like dog kin," she insists.

"Well, then very _good_ friends," I venture.

"No!" she says again. "Dog kin an' friendship don't necessarily have a _thing_ to do with each other."

"Well then, what in bloody hell is dog kin?"

"I've never had to explain it before," she says in exasperation. "Gimme a minute."

She slumps at her desk, one cheek resting in the palm of her hand, an action which grotesquely distorts her normally attractive features. It's nearly a minute until she opens her mouth to draw a breath, points a finger as if she's about to begin pontificating, then waves her hand as if batting the though away and says, "Nope, that won't work."

Another minute goes by, she sits up abruptly and grins, and points a finger in the air. 

"I got it!" she declares.

"Imagine you're an average Joe, livin' your life on earth. You work your job, raise your kids, love your wife. Every fall you clean the gutters after the leaves finish droppin'. Every Saturday through spring an' summer, you cut the grass; an' dependin' on the climate, you shovel snow an' salt the sidewalk in the winter. You nag one kid to walk the dog an' the other to clean the litterbox. Every Tuesday night, you roll the garbage bin to the curb for the Wednesday mornin' pickup, an' about once a month, you wake up havin' to pee at three in the mornin' an' step barefoot on a cold, wet hairball the cat hacked up in the hallway on your way to the toilet. You don't know whether to be glad she doesn't do it somewhere that it goes unnoticed an' dries fast to the floor or to be angry that she does it right where you walk, an' you're mystified by how she always knows to do it when you're gonna wake up needin' to pee. Unless it's the sound of her hackin' that wakes you an' you just assume you need to pee; but then, it would still be warm when you stepped in it, wouldn't it? Anyway, you try not to yell about it because you don't want to wake the whole house, but your wife always hears your disgusted grunt; so she cleans up the mess while you clean your foot off an' pee. Then you think briefly about tying the cat up in a sack full of rocks and throwing it off the bridge on your way to work; but it's your kid's cat an' she loves it to bits, an' you've kind of gotten used to it snugglin' with you while you watch the evenin' news an' the kids do their homework, an' what the hell? You finally admit to yourself that you're kind of fond of the little hairball, too.

"So, you're a regular guy, right, ordinary life, borin', simple problems, yeah?"

"All right," I agree. I can't resist the bemused little smile that works its way onto my face. I have learned from speaking with the commodore's father that this type of descriptive storytelling is very much a Southern thing, but I’m glad Ginny seems to have wrapped things up with the cat.

"Then you come home one perfectly ordinary Tuesday night to find nothin' left of your home but a big, smokin' hole in the ground. While you were at work, your kids were at school, an' your wife was doin' the shoppin', somethin' sparked a fire an' your house burned right down to the ground. A couple of firefighters are hangin' around, soakin' down the hot spots, but the excitement is over an' the damage done. Your wife an' kids, who always get home before you, are standin' in the driveway, huddled together in shock. After a quick check to make sure they're ok, you walk around the property to assess the damage. 

"The fire burned so hot, it took the garden shed with it. All that's left of the tools, the mower, an' your son's bike are the metal bits. Your daughter's playhouse was farther away, so it didn't ignite, but it has melted into somethin' out of a Salvador Dali paintin'. You find the dog under the neighbor's porch. He's got second and third degree burns on all four paws an' you’re sure the vet’ll have to amputate his tail, but when you call him gently, he crawls out, lays on your feet an' gingerly wags his scorched stump while lookin' up at you with his tongue lollin' out as if to say, 'We've had a very bad day an' I'm _so_ glad you're home.'

"You carry the dog to your wife an' kids an' ask them to tend to his feet and what's left of his tail. One of the firefighters offers the use of their first aid kit, an' you nod your thanks an' continue your walk around.

"You find the cat in the apple tree in the side yard. All the twigs on the house side of the tree are twisted an' black, an' you realize the fire was so hot it almost ignited a livin', well-watered tree. The poor cat is so frightened she has more than doubled in volume with all her hair puffed out, an' you know right away, you're gonna have to wrap her in your jacket if you don't want her to shred your skin.

"It takes about three tries, each climbin' higher into the tree, an' you've been scratched in the face an' but on the hand an' damned near fell out of the tree once, until you finally get the cat all bundled safely inside your jacket. By this time, of course, you're lost your way an' aren't sure quite how to get down, so the firefighters have to rescue you _an'_ the cat. At least it's a small tree. They can get you down with a little aluminum extension ladder. They don't need to call a ladder truck.

"You give the cat to your daughter, hug your wife an' kids. Your little family is intact. All you have are the clothes on your backs, a couple sacks of groceries your wife brought home from the market, an' whatever the kids might have in their lockers at school; but you are all alive, an' so, you are thankful.

"Now. What happens next?"

Ginny looks at me as if she expects an answer. I have to admit, she's done a good job making this little family real to me. I was her protagonist when he found the dog and actually thinking of Beans when the patriarch rescued the cat. 

I shrug and say, "I suppose we need somewhere to go. But _you're_ the one telling this story."

She grins and nods. "A friend will let you an' the wife an' kids spend a night, maybe two, in their guestroom. You can kennel the pets at the veterinary hospital where they'll be well looked-after, an' you an' the family can get cleaned up, rest a little, an' find temporary housin' at a local motel. Your friend does this because he likes you.

"A _good_ friend will let you stay a week or two. You can keep the cat in the downstairs bathroom off the garage an' the dog can stay in a crate in the spare room. You don't have to split the cost of the groceries, but if y'all wanted to buy the Sunday roast, that would be great. It'll give you time to buy yourselves some clothes an' essentials an' to find temporary housing. Your good friend does this because he cares about you.

"A _really_ good friend will let you stay until the insurance pays out. Since that's likely to take a few weeks, or even months, maybe you can alternate buyin' the groceries. The pets are welcome, too, but please keep them off the furniture an' crate them when you're not around to supervise them. It gives you plenty of time to restore your wardrobes, an' you don't have to worry about temporary housing. You can look for a place to move into as soon as the insurance money comes through, either a rental home while you rebuild or a permanent rental. Your really good friend does this because he loves you.

"But dog kin will let you move in with them, no time limit given. Buy groceries or don't, it's up to you. If they have clothes that fit you, you're welcome to wear what you like. They go through their closet with you, to help you pick out what you need, an' their wife an' kids do the same with your family. Their house is your house, an' that goes for the pets, too. When the insurance check comes in, they'll be offended if you offer them money to cover the extra expenses you an' your family have created for them, an' they'll tell you to take your time figurin' out what you want to do next. You're welcome to stay as long as you need.

"An' when the insurance comes through an' the house is rebuilt, an' the wife suggests a trial separation because of the strain the whole ordeal has put on the marriage, dog kin will let _you_ stay with them while the wife an' kids an' the cat an' dog move into the new house because, well, the wife an' kids _should_ have the house. An' when you go to visit the kids an' end up meetin' the wife's new boyfriend, dog kin will sit up with you while you kill a twelve-pack. An' the wife divorces you an' marries that boyfriend, dog kin will split a bottle of whiskey with you. Nothin' will ever be said about you findin' another place. Dog kin will see to your final arrangements if you never get your life back together. 

"Dog kin does not do this because they love you. Hell, they might even actively _dislike_ you, but somethin' somewhere in your two families' shared past happened that has intertwined you. You assume maybe a hundred years ago, your great-granddaddy saved his great-granddaddy's farm by lendin' him a tractor or somethin' when his was broken down at just the time he needed it an' couldn't afford to fix it an' would have lost his crop, an' therefore his farm if not for the loan of that particular item. It doesn't really matter exactly _what_ happened, but it was the kind of favor that can never be repaid, because it was a small act that saved a family, saved their lives an' their livelihood; an' everything that old farmer had, everything he left to his kids, everything they made from that inheritance, can be traced back to that one, small act of kindness. So, like it or not you're dog kin. 

"Friendship is individual an' interpersonal. Dog kin is clannish an' inter-generational. You're bound together like family, more than family, 'cause if family does somethin' bad enough, you can disown them, dog kin goes deeper than your DNA."

I'm quiet for a long time trying to make sense of this. My thoughts on the matter are too confused right now to give her any kind of a reasonable response, so I tell her what first came into my mind.

"That sounds every bit as ridiculous as people who think they're dogs trapped in human form."

Ginny looks a little disappointed at my response, and I really can't blame her. She went to a lot of effort to make a point, and I seem to have missed it. I also believe she was trying to get me to talk about my wolf behaviour, but _that_ 's not going to happen. Still, I did promise I'd answer her question.

"You wanted to know if the commodore's father had given me any useful advice or insight," I recall. 

"And?"

"Yes, he has."

She looks at me expectantly, wanting more. I shrug and say, "That answers your question, doesn’t it?"

"Malcolm…" 

She tries to keep the frustration out of her voice, but even if she'd succeeded, I'd have known what she was feeling. I'm sure, from her point of view, she feels like I'm fucking with her just for the hell of it, but that's not the case. I want to make her _understand_.

"I'm sorry, Ginny, I'm not intentionally being an arsehole," I say rather reluctantly, "but that's all I'm comfortable telling you right now."

Then, over the next ten seconds or so, the most unexpected thing happens. Her eyes start to glisten, her nose turns slightly red, her complexion gets blotchy, and when she speaks her voice is thick. "Why, Malcolm?"

It's easy to fake crying. Not a tactic I generally employ because it makes one appear weak, but it's something I've studied because in my line of work it's important to know when emotions are real. The shedding of emotional tears, as opposed to simple, natural eye lubricant or the reflexive tears that wash away irritants like dust and caustics like smoke and onions, depends on increased blood flow to the lachrymal gland. 

The brain is fed primarily by the internal carotid artery. The kidneys are fed by the renal arteries, and the liver by the hepatic. The iliac arteries narrow into the femoral and then the popliteal arteries which divide into other small vessels that sustain the legs and feet. The subclavian arteries work the same for the arms and hands. The organs and structures of the face are primarily fed by the aptly named facial artery. These larger vessels branch into smaller and smaller vessels until they get down to the capillaries that are really only wide enough to let one cell pass at a time. This basic knowledge of the circulatory system is useful in my work for three reasons. One, it can prevent a subject from dying before an interrogation is over. Two, a small cut easily mended made in the right place can provide a strong incentive for a subject to talk before he bleeds out. And three, when an interrogation is not as fruitful as one might have hoped, it can provide a dramatic way of disposing of a less-than-informative subject that, when witnessed by others, can render them significantly more co-operative.

Because the lachrymal gland is so small, only about two centimetres long and less than half that in width, the body cannot selectively direct blood to it and bypass the surrounding structures. It is fed by the capillaries, and increasing the blood flow to the tiny capillaries that supply the lachrymal gland requires increasing blood flow to all the surrounding tissues of the eye, face and neck. The increased blood flow is responsible for the blood-shot eyes, puffy skin, blotchy complexion, and in part, for the choked voice that comes with crying.

Anyone can fake crying. All one need do is strain the facial muscles a bit. Pull a few faces and fake some whimpers or sobs, and anyone who doesn't know enough to be sceptical will believe it before the blood flow starts and the tears begin to fall. Then one can really sell it when the anatomical changes take place.

Of course, people naturally make painful facial expressions when they're feeling intense painful emotions. Feelings really can physically hurt. So a contorted face is not proof that someone is faking tears.

On the other hand, when one is not pulling faces, only genuine emotion can cause the increased blood flow and subsequent anatomical changes associated with crying. 

And Ginny's expression hasn't changed.

I won't say I feel sorry for her, I'm not that soft; but I appreciate her sincerity enough to want to give her something in return. I can imagine that she’s crying out of sheer frustration because she wants to help me and I won’t – _can’t_ – give her the tools she needs.

"The day I suffered that … break, the commodore's father could have easily hurt me or humiliated me, but he didn't. Instead he took me aside and had a private word. All we did was talk. He didn't judge me for anything I told him. He _doesn't_ judge me, Ginny. We just _talk_."

"Malcolm, I don't judge you. I've told you that many times," she says in a sad little voice that only serves to anger me.

"I know you have – so many times, in fact that you can't even hear the lie in your own words!" Goaded beyond endurance by this outright lie, I shout back at her. "Every time I come in here, you judge me. You're trying to _fix_ me, Ginny, which means you have already determined that I am _broken_. That there is something _wrong_ with me, and I am not ready to admit that, Ginny! I am not ready to admit that I am evil. Not to you. Not to _anyone!_ Certainly _not_ _aloud_!"

I have gone hot and cold all over again, and I'm actually trembling with the chill. I've said far more than I intended, and been far more honest than I would have imagined possible. Ginny waits quietly for me to get control of myself. She is still weeping as I rub my hands together to warm them and then rub my arms to calm the gooseflesh.

"I can talk to Charles," I finally tell her, my own voice less steady than I’d have preferred it to be, "because he doesn't expect anything more from me. I don't have to admit that there's anything wrong with me. He doesn't tell me I'm evil, so I don't have to confess my sins to him. We _just talk._ "

Her tears are still falling, maybe even faster now than they were before, but to my bewilderment she’s smiling. When she doesn't speak for several moments, I feel the urge to prompt her, even if it is in a goaded voice.

" _What?_ "

She grabs a tissue and mops herself up, blowing her nose in a not-entirely-ladylike fashion, and then looks at me again with eyes that still glisten.

"Normally, I’d apologize for losing it that way in session," she says, "but this time, I'm glad I did. I don't think I’d have learned what I did if I’d been able to keep it together.

"I have _never_ said you are evil, Malcolm, and that's not just a matter of semantics. I don't think you're _bad_ or malevolent or malicious or horrible or any of the synonyms of any of those words. I don't believe people are made that way. Deep down, I'm not even convinced you're all that mean.

"I think you were hurt, a _very_ long time ago, and I think everything you have done since then has been either an act of retribution or an act of self-defence. I think you've spent most of your life either taking revenge for that original harm or preventing anything like it from ever happening to you again."

"So, I'm a victim, not a monster." I can’t keep the bitterness and anger out of my voice.

"No, Malcolm, you're a _survivor_ ," she says earnestly, and I get the impression from her tone that there really is a difference. "But after all this time, I think you deserve to do more than just survive. I think you deserve to _live_. You deserve to have fun and care about people and have friends and love somebody. 

"You deserve to have a _life_ , Malcolm, one that consists of more than just one long struggle of self-preservation, and that's what I want to help you achieve."

If I accept her tears as sincere, and I really have to because what happened to her can't be faked, then I suppose I’ve got to try to accept her words now as genuine as well, and that's going to take a while. It’s been a long time – far too long – since I took anyone or anything at face value, and bad habits are hard to unlearn.

"I think we're done for today," I tell her quietly. 

She quirks the corner of her mouth into a little half-smile and nods. "I think you're right."


	10. 46-50

**Chapter Forty-Six**

**Dog Kin**

_General Malcolm Reed_

I’m quiet as Liz wheels me to my room after my counselling session, and I think she senses something has happened because she doesn’t try to engage me in conversation. She parks up my wheelchair just outside the door and hands me the Zimmer frame. I've made enough progress now to be fairly independently mobile in a room with sufficient seating capacity to allow me to quickly drop somewhere whenever my legs say, 'No.'

I go directly to my bed and silently allow Liz to remove my shoes while I pull off my jacket. Then I step out of my trousers when she pulls them down over my hips, and sit down on the bed when she lowers it enough that I don't have to boost myself up. I lie on my side, slightly curled up, and the moment the blankets are settled over me, Beans jumps on the bed beside me. She kneads at the blanket a bit, turns a few circles, settles in with an audible sigh, and snuggles close against me. Within a minute, I can hear her purring and feel the warmth of her small body seeping through the blankets.

My afternoon rest period, which we all refrain from calling a nap because a while ago I just got sick to the back teeth with being infantilised, was a hard-fought battle for my treatment team, but surprisingly easily won once someone used the words that for me were the magic incantation to make me buy into it. For weeks I resisted the very idea of taking additional rest. I was tired, yes, but willing to fight through the fatigue for the extra time in physiotherapy; but I was refused. A nap was part of the plan, so I was put to bed in the middle of the afternoon. So, I would sullenly lie in my bed doing isometric exercises for two hours trying to build strength and stamina while being denied the opportunity to perform any meaningful, productive activity.

Until the day Liz had quite enough of my obstinate determination to be constantly working my feeble frame every waking hour of the day. That was the day she explained to me, at considerable volume, how the endocrine system works.

_"The only time most mammals produce enough growth hormone to be effective is during sleep, Malcolm," she informed me. "That’s why children and puppies and kittens and most juvenile mammals tend to nap."_

_"Well, I’m not a bloody child, am I?"_

_"No! However much you may act like one, you are not a child, just an idiot!"_

_I tried to protest, but she was in high gear and just ran me right over._

_"In adults, growth hormone is essential to repairing damaged organs, cells, and systems and to gaining muscle mass. You can exercise all you want, but if you exhaust yourself day after day and don't get sufficient rest, you will only grow weaker."_

_"Well, somebody could have told me that!"_

_"Well, now somebody has. The choice is yours. Be an idiot, or take better care of yourself!"_

For bedside manner, I gave her a zero; for patient education, it was a ten. I haven't resisted my afternoon rest since then, and though I haven't dozed off as I usually do, I'm not resisting now. 

I just have a lot on my mind.

So, after trying to nod off for a bit, I call out, "Liz?"

She usually occupies herself with reading, tidying, making notes, and other small chores while I sleep. I've come to find her presence and the small noises she makes as she moves about as comforting as the ones Ginny made that first day I actually participated in therapy were upsetting, and now I find it difficult to doze off without Liz ‘puttering about’ quietly.

"Would you…come and lie down with me?"

I have asked her this a few times now, often enough that it isn't the shocking request it once would have been. 

She moves into my line of sight and asks, "Do you want me to spoon with you? Are you cold? I could turn up the heater."

The space heater Liz requisitioned for my quarters keeps the place at a balmy twenty-four degrees, which I realize is a tad warm for anyone actively moving about and doing something, but Liz insists that since they are my quarters, they should be maintained for my comfort. Anyone who gets too warm can just step out into the corridor for a minute or two.

"No, I'm not cold," I assure her. "I’d just…like some company."

She smiles sweetly. "All right."

Ever since the first time, less than two weeks into this latest, bizarre chapter of my life, that she offered to spoon with me for warmth, she’s made a habit of very ostentatiously emptying her pockets before climbing onto the bed beside me. It isn't necessary anymore, but it's nice that she thinks to do something to put my mind at ease, so it makes me smile.

She toes off her shoes, and moves to the other side of the bed. I feel the covers lift, and then settle over the two of us as her warm, soft body snuggles in behind me. As ever, she is very careful to place her arms so that I won’t feel restricted, and in moments, I’m relaxing against her.

Yet still, I can’t sleep. "Liz?"

"Hmm?"

"Have you ever heard the expression, 'dog kin'?"

"Yes, Trip's used it in reference to me and a few other people."

"Oh."

We're quiet for a minute, but I can't help myself. I have to ask. "Liz?" 

"Yes?"

"Do you have people in your life that you consider dog kin?"

"I never would’ve called them that until I Trip taught me what it meant, but a handful, yes. Why do you ask?"

"Just wondering. I only ever heard the expression today."

She's not going to tell me. I wish I could see her face right now. I've learned enough to know that I'd never find the derisive sneer I’d previously have expected, but would I see the blank look of someone who isn't reading the subtext or the teasing smirk of someone saying, 'I know what you want to know and I'm going to make you ask?'

I'm not going to be able to sleep until I know, though I flay myself for the weakness it will expose and it takes a couple of tries before I can even make my mouth work. "Liz?"

"Mmm?"

"It's perfectly okay to say no, but do you consider…"

"No, Malcolm, I don't regard you as dog kin."

"Oh…I see." I can't deny I'm secretly slightly hurt (though Lucifer knows why I should expect her to feel any kind of warmth for me), but more than that, I'm confused. Why else would she invest so much time and energy into caring for me? Why would she tolerate my all-too-frequent abuse?

"No, from your tone of voice, I don't think you do," she gently reproaches me. "You see, as I understand it, dog kin is all about obligation, responsibility, and duty. It's a bond you didn't choose and aren't permitted to break. It's someone you're stuck with, like it or not.

"I don't feel that way about you, Malcolm. I _choose_ to be with you," she insists. "I told you before, I _love_ you, and I don't care what Trip or anyone else says about dog kin, as far as I'm concerned, love's a whole lot stronger than that."

I know I should respond. I know what one _should_ say in this situation, but I don't know if it would be the truth. After all these years, after so many betrayals, I don't know what love is any more, if I ever did, if I ever felt it _for_ someone or _from_ someone. But maybe counselling is starting to pay off, because the thought of answering her truthfully isn't nearly as scary as I would have expected.

"I wish I could tell you what you want to hear, Liz," I admit, my voice barely more than a whisper, because while the fear of being so honest isn't quite as paralysing as it would have been not so long ago, it's still very real. "But I don't want to lie to you, and my feelings are such a mess most of the time…"

"It's all right, Malcolm," she says with that infinite patience that so often infuriates me when I'm trying to get a rise out of her, but tonight, it's a soothing balm. "I'm in this for the long haul. You just concentrate on getting better."

"Thank you," I manage, and though it sounds woefully inadequate, when she snuggles closer and lick-kisses my ear, I know that it is enough.

"You should know, though, Malcolm, that Trip is first among those I consider dog kin, so please, don't ever make me choose between you. I would choose you, but it would break my heart."

I'm not ready to offer her any promises, but I do reach back and find her hand to squeeze it in gratitude for the reassurance she has given me.

And that is how I fall asleep.

* * *

**Chapter Forty-Seven**

**An Excursion to England**

_Corporal Amanda Cole_

I have to admit, sometimes I question Commodore Tucker's judgment, if only to myself.

I never would have imagined General Reed might have living family that he would want to see, much less family who would want to see him live and in person as opposed to on television. Family of any kind is the last thing I would associate with the general. If anyone had asked me, I'd have guessed that he had grown up an orphan or a foundling in one of the work camps at best, or in an abusive home with an incompetent mother at worst. The possibility that a monster like him could have been raised in a loving home just doesn't track with good common sense. A creature like the general isn't just born into the world. He is created through regular, unspeakable abuse, mistreatment, and neglect.

Yet here I am, in Northwood, Middlesex, England, searching through the Imperial Navy database for retired Rear Admiral Stuart Leslie Reed, and every time I think about that, I smirk. I’ve discovered that Leslie is a perfectly legitimate name for a man in the UK (where the -ey ending is the feminine form) but in the US and elsewhere it’s more usually given to a girl, so if he was brought up anywhere else than England he’d have had to be a hard bastard to carry it off. That might explain something about the general after all. Even a loving father, if he was relentlessly mocked growing up, could, possibly unintentionally, go to extreme lengths to ensure his smallish son was tough enough to get by.

When the United Earth Empire was formed, the British Royal Navy already had a reputation for superiority stretching back over 350 years to the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588. So, when it came time for the Empire to create a force to police the high seas, it was a simple matter to just hand the job over to the people who'd already proven they could do it. My research into the general's background, which led me here, reveals that his father was the sixth generation of Reed men to serve in the navy. General Reed was all set to have become the seventh, but on the eve of his commissioning, following a respectable-if-not-brilliant career as a cadet at the Imperial Naval College, Dartmouth, he jumped ship for the MACOs with no explanation. Someone must have smoothed the way for him, or even pushed him overboard, to make it happen, because, while no name is mentioned in the records, all the fines and fees that come with enrolling in one of the Imperial Colleges and bailing on your service commitment after getting your free education were paid, and no penalty was ever levied against the General or, as far as I can tell, his family.

I can't imagine that Rear Admiral Stuart Leslie Reed, I.N., Retired, was especially pleased when young Malcolm abandoned a guaranteed second lieutenant's commission for the uncertainties of life as a MACO recruit, but at least, after his basic training they made young Malcolm Stuart Reed (I'm guessing giving the father's first name as the son's middle name is another family tradition stretching back centuries) a full corporal. For most MACOs, it takes three or four years to make corporal, the lowest of the non-commissioned officer ranks, but I suppose they jumped him ahead in consideration of his Dartmouth training. 

It could not have been easy for young Corporal Reed to be advanced so far right out of basic. It took me two years and nine months to get my rank, after taking command of my squad when our leader was killed in a particularly bloody confrontation with some Klingon rebels on a colony world. I got the rest of my team out safely. Even with my experience and an award for valor pinned to my chest, I was challenged daily by my subordinates because I was young and female. Corporal Reed would have been younger than almost all of the MACOs he commanded. With his lack of combat experience and his slight stature – he's not just smaller than most men in the general population, but even several centimeters shorter than the average female MACO – he would have had to battle every day just to maintain order among his squad, let alone actually command them.

It should have been a recipe for disaster. Without the support of his troops, the young officer should have died in combat, or been executed for a mission gone wrong because of his inability to maintain discipline and command effectively. But apparently a Dartmouth graduate is a bit cleverer than your average MACO. Three weeks into his first posting – and I have to admit, I’m surprised he survived that long without taking action – Corporal Reed hospitalized four of his own men when they jumped him during a training session. One of them eventually died of his injuries, and another, paralyzed from the neck down, was lucky the ship was due to rendezvous with a troop transport, or he’d have been spaced as soon as it was determined his eventual recovery would take more time and resources than a warship's medical staff could provide. Of course the delay in treatment meant there would be no recovery, but at least, if he had a family, there would be someone to care for him – providing he survived the journey home.

After the Battle of Training Room Six, the number of disciplinary issues dropped sharply in Corporal Reed's squad. The powers that be soon steered him into the Enlisted Commissioning Program. He was promoted to sergeant, sent away for some special, classified training, and returned a staff sergeant. From there, success built upon success, the record written in the blood of those who would defy him, until he was promoted to major and posted to the _ISS Enterprise_ as head of security. There was a bit of a bobble when Captain Maximillian Forrest lost the _Enterprise_ , but Reed was one of the fortunate ones to make it over to the _Defiant_. The record shows he was injured in a confrontation with a saboteur, but then it all gets a bit vague until he emerged as one third of the Triad along with Generals Alpha and Gomez.

I wonder if Admiral Reed is proud of what his son has accomplished, if he even knows how many bodies the general had to climb over to get where he is. What must his mother have felt to watch him on television, slicing a screaming man to ribbons, unmoved by his sobbing pleas for mercy? Or were his family among the small handful of people who might have been excused from witnessing the general's triumph in cruelty? Does his younger sister, Madeline, admire her big brother, love him, or fear him?

Ever since Charles laid down the law the general has been very respectful of all of the Tuckers. He seems genuinely fond of Elaine, always has a smile for her, and seems pleased to help her in the kitchen. He’s told Rachel she reminds him of his sister and has shared several apparently happy childhood memories with her. He and Bert argue constantly over some of the laws that have been passed since the Triad rose to power. The general seems to be making an honest effort to keep it civil, though it's anybody's guess whether Bert has managed to change his mind about anything. Nobody knows what Charles and the general talk about, but the old man spends time with him every day after dinner in a quiet corner of the dining room. I've seen the general listening earnestly, nodding occasionally, and asking a question every now and then. 

General Reed is more than clever enough to fake interest, attention, and respect – and even affection for Elaine – but when I mentioned this to Commodore Tucker, he insisted we accept them all as genuine.

"Sometimes, 'Manda, all it takes to get the best out of someone is to choose to see it in 'em," he told me. "I don't know if it'll work that way with Malcolm, but it's worth a shot. So we're all gonna be honest with him, an' act as if he’s doin' the same with us, within reason. Now, we're keepin' a close eye on him, an' I've got him on a short leash with a choke collar. He can't do much more’n hurt somebody's feelin's right now."

"But what about later," I insisted. "What do you plan to do then?"

"Well, I can't say I exactly have a plan," he admitted to my horror, "but I’ve set a headin'. If Malcolm’s to make the trip with us, he's gonna need a lot of help. If you can't do that, I'm gonna have to ask you to stay away from him."

I stood to attention then, recognizing the challenge being issued, however gently it was worded. "I'll do whatever you ask of me, Commodore. I just don't understand what we _are_ trying to do."

"Good girl," he nodded. "What we’re tryin’ to do, basically, is to turn a monster back into a human bein'." Then his face brightened with a genuine grin. Alluding to one of his ridiculous horror movies, he told me, "We're tryin' to cure the _Curse of the Werewolf_." Chuckling, he added, "Maybe that's a good sign. The werewolf was played by a fella named Reed."

I couldn't help rolling my eyes. The commodore has a really peculiar sense of humor. "I've seen that movie, too, sir, and as I recall, the 'cure' was a well-aimed silver bullet."

He sobered immediately and grunted softly. "You're right. Maybe that isn't a very good comparison. You're also right to question me, 'Manda."

"Respectfully, sir, I wasn't questioning you, exactly, I just…"

"Of course you were," he said amiably. "It's all right, when you do it privately an' respectfully. That's what I _want_ you to do, 'cause if I'm doin' somethin' that doesn't make sense to a sensible young woman like you, maybe I'm missin' a piece of the puzzle."

"Sir?"

"Well, you make a valid point," he told me, leaning back against the table where we’d been stacking plates ready to put them into the dishwasher. "General Reed _could_ be fakin' it with my family. I happen to think he doesn't yet have the mental energy to keep up such a fraud for as long as he has, but even if you're right, a man doesn't learn overnight how to fake it with family."

"Sir?" I repeated. When the commodore has to explain something to me, he often confuses me more before ultimately making his point. He sees the way things work versus the way they _should_ work, and then drills down through the layers until he finds the difference between what is and what ought to be, and fixes that. So far, his technique seems to work as well for human problems as it does for engineering, though I imagine General Reed will prove the ultimate test of its efficacy.

"Well, think about the people here in the bunker," he suggested. "Can you guess which two never had a family?"

It didn't take me long. "Sturges and Lymon," I concluded.

"How did you guess?" he asked. "They're as friendly an' polite with my family as anyone here."

"Well, that's just it, isn't it?" I said. "They're friendly and polite. Everyone else is comfortable and casual, and, giving the general the benefit of the doubt, honest. For example, Liz is a grouch in the mornings, and while she might not be rude, she doesn't fake being cheerful for your folks either. Even when your father just says, 'Good morning’, she'll tell him, 'Not until I've had my coffee’."

The commodore chuckled at that, and said, "That's exactly what I'm talkin' about. You only learn to interact that way with family by growin' up in one or havin' one of your own. Despite the fact that he just recently gave birth, the general is no parent, so he must have been somebody's kid, an' I can tell you from experience, that nothin' soothes a battered soul like the love an' acceptance of family.

"I want you to find the general's folks, 'Manda, an' I want you to find out if they would be agreeable to visitin' him to boost his spirits while he recovers from a serious illness."

"And when they say he didn't seem ill in his last public address?" I asked.

He rolled his eyes and puckered his face into a thoughtful frown. "Tell 'em he's puttin' up a brave front for the good of the Empire, but he's really not well. Tell ‘em he needs a little encouragement from the people he loves an' we would all be very grateful if they would come visit.

"Of course, you know you'll need to do all of this on the down low," he reminded me. "There's no tellin' who's watchin' them, lookin' for an opportunity to use them against Reed."

"Like us, you mean?" I teased with a grin.

"What we're doin', Corporal Cole, is for his own good," he hissed, startling me. The commodore’s mercurial temperament is well known on Jupiter Station, but I’d never seen him get so angry so quickly, and I’d never had him get angry with _me_ before. With his blue eyes sparking with anger, his fists clenched tightly at his sides, and a muscle in his jaw twitching, it didn't take much to imagine him physically hurting me – even though with this man, that’s a step I don’t think he’d take without extreme provocation and excellent reasons.

"I…Of course, sir," I agreed a bit breathlessly. "I was only making a joke."

"I didn't find it very funny," he growled. "Only a snake would threaten a man's family."

Anyone who sees the commodore with his family can tell how protective of them he is and how close they all are. It never occurred to me that he might feel _they_ are under threat. Commodore Tucker seems so open and friendly that I sometimes forget how much there is that I _don't_ know about the man.

"I apologize, sir," I told him. "I meant no offense."

He took a couple of slow deep breaths and seemed to make a conscious effort to change his expression. "Of course you didn't, 'Manda. I know that. I shouldn't have got mad. Let's just say you hit a sore spot an' leave it at that, ok?"

"Yes, sir," I agreed readily.

"Now, if Reed's family agree to visit him, you'll have to set up a secret meetin' between me an' them," he says. "I need to speak to them myself before I bring them into this bunker. I need to know for sure that their intentions are sincere, an' that they're not gonna try to give us away at some point in the future. However important it is to me to help Reed, I'm not riskin' the security of this place just to let him see his mama."

Typically, he's taking full and final responsibility for everything that happens on his watch and the safety of everyone under his command, including his own parents. Even if I think his scheme is crazy, I can't deny how kind and thoughtful he is to go to such lengths for the general.

Like I said, sometimes I question Commodore Tucker's judgment, but never his intentions. 

As it turns out, Madeline Reed lives in London, just a few Tube stops away from the airport. She can confirm for me whether her parents are still in Malaysia.

* * *

**Chapter Forty-Eight**

**Encounter in the Desert**

_Commodore Charles Tucker III_

I don’t think I realized when I gave Amanda her orders how difficult they would be to carry out.

In hindsight, it was obvious that the parents of a member of the Triad would be very well hidden. Malcolm must have known full well that they would be prime targets, both for revenge attacks and as leverage against him. Madeleine reluctantly gave Amanda a number that left a message that would be collected ‘sooner or later’, but in the end I had to call in a whopping big favor to penetrate the maze that kept them hidden.

It took even Her a while. But a few hours ago, She gave me the go signal, and I’ve snatched half an hour out of a visit to the R&D center on Earth to visit a dilapidated old garage on the outskirts of the desert.

I’ve brought only the security people I truly feel I can rely on. Even that is a risk, but it’s a risk I have to take. I don’t want Mal’s parents put in any more danger than they already are.

The sun’s setting. I pace around the garage, which is dusty and deserted. Nobody lives there except lizards, which live under the rotting veranda and come out to sun themselves on the floor planking as soon as dawn comes, though I'm sure that once the rattlesnakes I've heard slithering around in the weeds at the edges of the parking area figure out the shop has been abandoned they’ll take over. 

During her preliminary visit, Amanda bought some old clothes that’d fit me (more or less) from a consignment shop in the next town down the road, and dressed in them I’ll attract no attention even if anyone sees me from the highway. At closer range and with the help of the gathering twilight, if I keep them on my left and keep my head down, the hooded jacket and mirrored aviator sunglasses I'm wearing should conceal the distinctive droop of my damaged face. It never occurred to me when I took over Jupiter Station that our activities and achievements would be interesting enough to anyone for them to start flashing my ugly mug on the news often enough for people to recognize me. A bedroll on the floor and an old backpack mark me as just another homeless guy sleeping in whatever shelter he can find, and I’ll guess that folks hereabouts are too busy scratching a living to pay much mind to just another traveler down on his luck.

The guards are in the surrounding hills, keeping watch. The communicator that will vibrate at the first sign of danger is hidden in the back pocket of a worn old pair of jeans that are loose round my waist and too long in the leg, so that folds of faded denim around the hems are constantly trying to work their way under my boots.

We deliberately chose a highway which sees some traffic. Not much, but enough that the sight of a van rolling by and stopping at the garage won’t raise any eyebrows. After all, the place was open till just a few months ago, and the signs swinging in the desert wind still look as if it just might have gas for sale.

A few trucks go by, and vanish into the dusty desert haze. Then, just as I’m starting to wonder whether something may have gone wrong, a small van appears in the distance. At first it looks as though this one’s going to follow all the others, but almost at the last minute the bare light of the indicator bulb winks on and the vehicle pulls into the garage, stopping beside the compressed air dispenser.

“Nearside rear tire’s low,” the driver grunts through the lowered side window as I stroll out, wiping my hands on a dirty rag. “Still got any air in that machine?”

“’Bout the only thing we do have,” I respond, spitting. “Cost you two credits.”

“Bastard.” He gets out and slips his credit chip into the slot, and while he’s busy with the tire I stroll around to the back of the van.

This is unlocked. A gift for any hobo, and of course I’m going to check it out in case there’s anything I can steal.

Quick as a coyote I open the door just enough to slip inside.

Where I find two very ordinary and apprehensive-looking civilians, seated side by side between two armed MACOs.

At my nod, the guards don headphones that will fill their ears with white noise, effectively blocking out whatever’s said here. At the same time they drop down the goggles they’re wearing perched above their foreheads, and a close observer would notice that the lenses are completely opaque.

I have very little time. The guy outside will mess about with his tire for as long as he can, but there’s a limit to what you can do even with a faulty pressure gauge and a slow leak.

I squat down in front of the man and the woman. “Thank you for agreein’ to meet me, Admiral Reed, Mrs. Reed,'' I say rapidly. “I’m sorry all this has been necessary, but it’s strictly for your protection.”

Mal’s father looks a little older than his wife, but you can still see the military in the way he holds himself. “Commodore Tucker, I believe,” he replies formally. “Your message stated that our son is ill.”

“There hasn’t been any mention of it on the News,” his wife adds anxiously. “And he seemed well enough on the last broadcast…”

I’m not going to go into detail here of everything that’s been going on while the Empire was kept in the dark.

“The general kept up a brave front as long as he could,” I tell them (it was true enough, if not at all the way they imagine). “But he’s been through a real bad time. I think it’d do him a lot of good if he could see his family for a visit. I guess it’s been a long while since you all saw each other any other way than on a screen.”

Mrs. Reed darts her husband a glance. Mal favors her more than his daddy; he has her dark eyes and hair. He got his stubborn chin from his dad, though in profile they’re a little more alike.

“Madeleine may not choose to come,” the Admiral says heavily. “She and her brother became … estranged at one point. But if you feel that our presence will be of benefit to him, and can arrange a visit without endangering my wife, we will accept with gratitude.”

“That’s all I needed to hear.” I stand up – I’ve pretty well used up all the time there is – and hand him a spare communicator keyed into one of my old diplomatic frequencies. “Keep that to hand, Admiral, an’ I’ll make sure the instructions are sent to you. But make sure no-one else gets a hold of it, okay?”

“They won’t.” No more than that, but I get the feeling that Fortress Reed is about to pull up the drawbridge and set the oil boiling, and with a smile and a nod I turn away.

“Get out of there, you thievin’ bastard!” The driver erupts through the door, grabs me by the scruff and hurls me bodily out of the van, just a bit harder than we had agreed. I still manage to sprawl artistically in the road, though, so that he can jump down and land a boot on my butt.

“Wasn’t nothin’ in it anyways!” I howl, and it's not all for show. I think Sergeant Lymon might just have forgot he's supposed to be playacting. “Load of ol’ junk, you think I’m gonna waste my time stealin’ that?”

“You get your sorry thievin’ ass out of here, or I’ll damn well call the sheriff’s office!”

“I’m goin’, I’m goin’!” I scramble to my feet and start walking with a show of defiance towards the scrub, until a menacing step forward from him sets me scurrying.

As I melt into the dusky scrubland, my ears alert for the distinctive whirr of a rattlesnake's tail, I hear the van start up.

Mission accomplished – or at least, set in hand.

* * *

**Chapter Forty-Nine**

**A Difficult Introduction**

_Lieutenant (j.g) Elizabeth Cutler_

I don’t even want to _think_ about how much organization it’s taken to get us to this moment.

The three members of Malcolm’s family are ushered into the reception room. They look nervous, and I can’t blame them, so I move forward as quickly as possible, smiling warmly.

Admiral Reed is very reserved, his handshake stiff and short. Mrs. Reed’s presence is overpowered by his, but she seems a warm and pleasant woman, carefully made-up for the occasion, with a subtly stylish handbag over one arm.

Mal’s sister, however, hangs back. Her face is set, and I already know from Trip that she took some persuading to come here. And yet, now and again Mal has referred to his baby sister, mentioned things they got up to when they were children. I get the feeling that they were close.

So there must be some reason for her air of reserve – which, of course, simply accentuates her resemblance to her brother, who can assume a reserve that would make armor plating look soft. She doesn’t look much like him, except around the eyes, and she seems to have the same habitual frown.

“I believe you’re Madeleine,” I say, offering my hand. “I’ve heard about you from Malcolm.”

She hesitates before she takes it, and the frown deepens. “He talks about me?”

“Not much,” I say frankly. “He’s been very ill – mentally and physically – and he’s still in recovery. We encourage him to talk, but it took a while before he felt able to hold anything you’d call a conversation.”

“But what exactly is _wrong_ with him?” cries Mrs. Reed. “Nobody seems to be willing to tell us anything!”

I gesture them all to the comfortable chairs set ready; this is going to take a while.

They sit, and I fetch them drinks. Then I take my own seat, and cradle my own drink while I consider where to start and what exactly I should say.

“Malcolm was held prisoner in a laboratory for over a year,” I say at last, quietly. “The other two members of the Triad decided to use him as the subject for … an experiment.”

“A _year!_ ” The admiral’s face stretches in shock. “We haven’t seen him on the news reports very often lately, but we understood he was leading the new expansion program in person…” 

“If there _is_ any expansion program, sir, he had no part in it. They arranged to use highly sophisticated technology to replicate his image and his voice. By then he was on Jupiter Station, a prisoner. 

“But for Commodore Tucker’s ingenuity and his own courage, he’d still be there – if he’d survived. And I’m not at liberty to go into details, but between them they probably saved the entire Human race.” 

It’s a big thing to take on board, especially since there must have been moments when it seemed to them that Mal was carrying out an extermination program all on his own. I see them all digesting it, but the frown on Madeleine’s face doesn’t soften much.

“You say – you say he was ‘experimented on’.” It takes a moment or two before Mrs. Reed can make herself go on; I can’t imagine many worse things for a mother to hear, except perhaps that her child has been killed. “Are we allowed to know in what way?”

I’ve debated within myself whether I should tell them this. In one way I think it would be kinder, but on the other hand it would be totally violating patient confidentiality. It’s Malcolm’s right to tell them if he wants them told.

“I’m sorry, no, I can’t tell you that,” I reply quietly. “As one of his team of care-givers I have an obligation to protect his privacy. But I can tell you that it involved extreme physical and mental trauma, and you should be prepared for him to be quite a different person from the one you last met. I hope you’ll treat him with the understanding he deserves.”

“‘The understanding he _deserves_ ’?” His sister speaks suddenly, pain and anger in her voice. “We heard about what he did – that – that ‘lingchi’. My own brother did that to a fellow human being and made almost everyone in the Empire watch while he did it! Now you’re saying _he_ deserves understanding? 

“I’ll never forgive him for that. I’m sorry, no. I can’t understand it and I can’t forgive it, and as far as I’m concerned, whatever he’s been through he deserved it.

“I used to be proud of him. I’ll admit that, I was. I was proud of the way he fought his way up, never let his size hold him back. But I went online afterwards and – and I saw some of what he did. And after seeing that, I don’t think I ever knew him at all.”

I nod. I can understand that. I can understand it better than most, having suffered at his hands aboard _Enterprise_ as often as I did. I had to watch the ritual sacrifice too, and for all that my eyes were blurred with tears most of the time, there are still days when I struggle to reconcile that cold-blooded sadistic murderer with the Malcolm I know and love.

His parents say nothing. I guess they’ve had to come to terms with it somehow, and they’re not discussing it with me.

“Thank you for agreeing to come and see him, all the same.”

“You say he’s in recovery,” says the admiral, after a moment. “Is he recovered enough to talk to us?”

“Oh yes, sir. But you need to be aware, he’s having to use a wheelchair right now. He _can_ walk, but only for short distances – he’s taking part in a strict regimen to build his strength back up.”

He struggles for a bit with that idea, but finally nods. “Thank you, Lieutenant Cutler. Now, may we see our son?”

I look to Madeleine. “I understand your anger," I say. "Given what you know, you have every right to be angry. I won't argue that, but I need your word that you won't antagonize Malcolm. We haven’t told him you're here. The surprise of seeing you is going to be stressful enough. He's still too fragile for an angry confrontation on top of that."

When she narrows her eyes at the perceived insult, her previously vague resemblance becomes so clear, it's chilling.

"I can manage to be civil, Lieutenant Cutler," she says acidly, "at least until I see for myself just how 'fragile' he is."

I nod my acceptance. I’ll take her at her word.

"All right then," I say, trying to sound a bit more cheerful as I look at Admiral and Mrs. Reed. "I'll contact Commodore Tucker, and he'll bring Malcolm to you shortly."

* * *

**Chapter Fifty**

**Reed Reunion**

_General Malcolm Reed_

Ooh, I’m being taken for a walk. Or – if we’re being pedantic – a roll, since I pushed myself so hard this morning that my legs have decided they’re not playing any more, at least till tomorrow morning when they’ll be in trouble again.

This is _so_ exciting, I tell my volunteer helper, and despite the silly falsetto I put on, it’s not completely untrue. I haven’t been around much yet, and anything different to look at is welcome. The commodore has apparently managed to squeeze some time out of his schedule to drop in and say hello, so I co-opted him to do the pushing; I don’t know where Liz has got to this morning, but I’m sure she’ll be along when she can.

The bunker where I've been staying happens to have a structure above it, a big, Victorian sort of conservatory thing that supposedly houses rare specimens with potential medicinal and industrial applications, though from what I've been told, the outside is carefully maintained to look like a derelict. But as the commodore wheels me into a huge, radiant room filled with lush vegetation and vibrant colour, I slam on the brakes so hard he almost tips me out of the chair – not to mention walking into the back of it and practically falling over into my lap.

There’s a space in the middle of the microcosmic jungle where fans of great palm-leaves cast shade over a fountain, and there are tables and chairs there. Presumably people come here to relax, but there’s no-one there now except three people I recognise instantly, seated awkwardly around a table. The fourth spot is occupied by an equally familiar, perhaps more welcomed, certainly less terrifying (now that I'm familiar with its owner) broad back.

Still, no amount of breathing techniques would control the panic that wells up inside me. I feel as if it’s literally gripping me by the throat.

“No!” I whisper. I can’t bear to see them, not after everything – not now I’m looking like this, like a wasted shadow of what I was.

I don’t think they’ve noticed our arrival yet. I can still escape.

“Get me out of here, you fucking idiot!” I hiss. “Do you _really_ suppose they want anything to do with me, after all I’ve done?”

I sense the commodore's shrug. “Fine, you don't want to talk to 'em, I'll turn around an' wheel you right back out of here, but if I do, I'm tellin' Daddy to send 'em home without a word of explanation. You really want to do that to 'em?"

I want to protest that he couldn’t be so cruel to them after bringing them all the way here, but I’ve already begun to suspect that Commodore Tucker doesn’t do bluffing. As for Charles, well, he knows rather more about me than his son does (more than _anyone_ does, come to that), but I doubt if he'd say anything. He's been extraordinarily supportive and reassuring in our after-dinner talks, but he's been scrupulously careful not to meddle in his son's plans.

Still, I can’t help peering rather desperately through the fronds. It’s so much different seeing someone in real life as opposed to over a video link. Once the Triad came to power I hardly ever seemed to have the time to contact my parents even when I thought about it (which, I’ll admit, wasn’t very often), and when Maddie stopped accepting my occasional calls I stopped trying. She’s as stubborn as I am, and I just decided she’d got a bee in her bonnet over something and quite frankly I hadn’t got the time to worry about it; if she’d decided to dump my acquaintance that was her prerogative. It’s a lot bloody easier to be holier-than-me when you’re not up to your arse in wolves and breathing psychotropic air.

Now and again I was sorry – we used to be fairly close – but not often. There was always so much else to think about, and there’s no use crying over spilt milk.

Whatever else Pack mentality may be, it’s mercilessly practical.

Perhaps a minute passes while I dither, and then I feel the click of the brakes coming off and Tucker starts to turn the chair.

"No! Wait!" I grab the wheels, holding it still. I can scarcely breathe. "Bloody hell, after ... I ... I _want_ to see them, but they’re not going to want to talk to me after everything I’ve done, are they?"

"I don't know, Mal," he says, kindly enough, "but you'll never find out unless you talk to them. Sometimes, even knowing the worst is better than living in doubt."

I swallow. 

Presumably they weren’t brought here at gunpoint. That would have been my style if I’d ever decided they were going to attend a family reunion whether they wanted to or not, but I’m guessing the commodore was rather more subtle than that. At a guess, he gave them a choice.

That means they _want_ to be here, or at least they're willing, and there _is_ a difference between genuine desire and a co-operative nature.

Willing to be here _for what_ is a more complicated question.

I’ve come a long way by some twisted paths since the last time they saw me. I’m not the shining young cadet who took the salute at the Imperial Naval College all those years ago.

For years it didn’t matter, because I didn’t allow it to matter. The baptism of fire on Wolfplanet Mindfuck set my feet firmly on the road to hell, and from there I went merrily onwards, carving my own path with whatever tools came to hand. I didn’t give a damn who hated me as long as they feared me, and if that meant I wasn’t the credit to the Reed name that I might once have hoped to be back in my salad days, well, at least they couldn’t complain I hadn’t made my mark on the world.

(Not to mention quite a few people’s bodies and a lot more people’s lives, but well, that’s the Empire for you.)

But does it matter now?

It probably does to them. I suppose it had never occurred to me before just how much, and now it has, I realise that matters to me.

The strength of my compulsion to do a smart about-turn and vanish into my room, leaving them to whatever their feelings may be on the occasion, is the only possible indicator of how much I fear meeting them and receiving the full force of their disappointment in me and their horror and disdain of what I have become. I knew full well how badly Father would have taken my failure to follow him and generations of prior Reeds into the Royal, now Imperial Navy, but then my failure wasn’t entirely down to me. Events, so to speak, intervened without my permission, and by the time I was finally thrust out of a lab and into MACO command rank then what I’d become would have had a very hard time indeed fitting in aboard your average battleship. For one thing, on a battleship people can't run away from you.

I’m a _general_ , for pity’s sake – technically, anyway, because I don’t recall receiving any official notification that I’d been cashiered or anything; though I must say nobody mentioned on the occasion of my promotion that being impregnated would be numbered among my expected duties, or I might have thought twice about accepting. I therefore co-rank an Admiral, so strictly speaking I no longer have to respect my father’s authority in the military sense. But I never had any trouble with that, and it doesn’t weigh in the scales now.

“Let’s get it over with,” I say almost inaudibly.

I feel Tucker's hand squeeze my shoulder, and I’d like to say that it bolsters my courage but the truth is it falls into the abyss of fear, leaving hardly a twinkle in the darkness.

As I’m pushed into the sunlight, so bright that I involuntarily bring my hand up to shield my eyes (it’s been well over a year since I saw daylight, after all), their heads turn like those of deer scenting a tiger.

With the dazzle of the sunshine making my eyes water, I have to blink a bit before I can take in the expressions on the faces before me.

Charles has risen from his seat and moved it out of the way to make room for me. With Mother, Father, and Maddie watching me like cornered prey waiting for the chance to bolt, he's able to offer me an encouraging smile and a wink unobserved. I appreciate the gesture, but it hits the wall of my anxiety like a bird flying into a plate glass window and drops like a stone to lie dead in the dust.

The commodore pushes me right up to the table, and almost before the wheels have stopped turning, Mother’s arms are around me. I almost collapse into them, inhaling the sweet rose perfume she always uses mingled with that particular scent of freshly-laundered cotton from her blouse.

This is a demonstration to which I forfeited the right long ago, but still she acknowledges me as her son. I lie there silently for a moment, awash with joy and relief that I try without success to label pure sentimentality, but my tolerance of such close contact is short-lived. Her embrace soon feels far too much like captivity, and with a shudder of fear that I do my best to hide, I pull away, dabbing a shy kiss on her cheek as I do so, and try to muster a smile.

As I straighten in my wheelchair I turn to face Father.

He was never demonstrative. I don’t think he ever really gave me any physical demonstration of affection, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t aware of his pride in me when I did well, and that he loved me in his own very reserved way. Nor do I expect him to be able so lightly to dismiss my past; but that he will come to visit me at all is more than I can feel I deserve. The day I turned my back on the Imperial Navy I had to face the very real possibility that he’d never want to set eyes on me again, and events since will hardly have reconciled him to my alternative choice of career.

He will expect me to behave as the officer I am, even in the present circumstances. It’s naturally not possible for me to stand at parade rest, but I sit up as straight as I can, looking him in the eye.

Mother is anxious. She takes one of my hands and holds it, squeezing it occasionally; I am stupidly relieved that she is on my left side and so takes the one nearest to her, the one that did not wield the scalpel.

The commodore has retreated a few paces but not abandoned me, and though Charles has moved his seat off to the side, I can sense the comforting presence of his bulk just beyond the limit of my peripheral vision, for which I am absurdly grateful. Clearly, my family now know Charles, but the commodore's rank if nothing else entitles him to the courtesy of a formal introduction (even though they quite possibly recognise him from the newscasts), and so I do the necessary. He acknowledges their polite greetings, but makes it clear as he pulls over a chair and sits down beside his father at a little distance from us that he is not here to interfere unless it becomes necessary.

I’m also aware of Maddie’s fixed and not particularly friendly regard, but for the time being that will have to wait.

“I’m glad to see you all, Father,” I say next, with my usual sparkling originality. “Thank you for agreeing to come here.”

His eyes travel over my face, mapping the changes in it. I’m sure he’s already noticed the bulk I’ve lost, the way the T-shirt hangs where it used to lie over well-developed muscle.

“Lieutenant Cutler told us you’ve been ill,” he says slowly. “She said that you were betrayed, and cruelly treated by the other two members of the Triad. Is that correct?”

“Perfectly.” I keep my head up. “It was only thanks to Commodore Tucker’s quick thinking and courage that I survived.”

Mother sends the commodore a tremulous, grateful smile. Maddie sends him a glare, presumably for not leaving me to my well-earned fate.

“But since you were still alive, why wasn’t it announced at once?” A frown creases Father's brow as he starts to think things through. "I suppose I can see the reason in keeping that sort of betrayal and instability amongst the highest ranks a secret from the general population," he muses. Then he glances keenly at the commodore. “Do the authorities actually _know_?” 

“Matter of fact, sir, that's not a simple yes-or-no question.” Tucker answers him easily. “The Empress knows he’s alive an' recoverin', but not the extent of his condition or any specifics of what was done to him. She has entrusted his safety an' well-being to me, an' I do not intend to disappoint the Empress. We have agreed to keep his illness and location secret – not even she knows where we are. For one thing, in his present shape the general here isn’t strong enough yet to take up his duties, an’ I may have a lot of power around here but I don’t have enough to keep him safe if one of the big sharks in the pool decide to take him out before he recovers.

“That he _will_ recover I’m sure, an’ we’re all doin’ our best to help him along – an’ that includes reinin’ him in when he tries to push himself harder’n he ought to.”

In the Empire, self-interest is everything. Father is far too astute (and cynical) to believe that anyone would take such a risk without having something to gain from it. “May I ask what your motives were for carrying out this rescue?”

“The stability of the Empire, Admiral.” The reply comes promptly, without a smile. “The Empress is holdin’ on, for now, but without the Triad she’s lost a lot of support. There’ll be others, the sharks I mentioned, all with their eyes on the big one. An’ some of them are the sort of people who’ll make the Empire into their own personal killin’ ground if they get hold of it.

“Now the general here, when he’s up to full strength I reckon he’s got the support to back her up an' fight off the opposition. I also reckon he can be the sort of guy now who’ll do the best he can to straighten things out an' make life fairer for the little guys, an’ I’m sure you know there’s plenty around that could do with that kind of help from someone who has the power to do it.

“So that’s my reasonin’, an’ I don’t know if anything will work out the way we want it to but I guess we just have to wait an’ see, don’t we?”

Mother’s grip tightens convulsively on my hand. “What kind of risks would that involve? And would the Empress accept Malcolm’s help?”

“It’ll be risky.” He nods sombrely. “An’ it’ll need some luck, that nobody else makes their move before we’re ready to. But I’m guessin’ the Empress will see sense. On her own, she’s vulnerable. With a strong consort, she’s a lot more likely to hold on to power.”

 _‘Consort’._ It’s the word nobody to date has actually spoken, and hearing it sends an odd cold frisson of excitement through my belly. 

It’s obviously the ideal solution. Hoshi will have little choice but to accept me if things get that far, and I flatter myself that she and I already have a decent working relationship, though obviously some things will have to be rather different. It will afford her some stability as well as at least some assurance that I’m not just marking time beside her till the moment comes when I feel strong enough to take over completely.

But still ... ‘consort’.

I wonder if Liz is aware of this aspect of the plan; and if she is, what she thinks about it.

Sooner or later (and it will have to be sooner rather than later, things being as they are), the Empress will be expected to produce an heir – unless, for any reason, she decides to nominate one, but I believe most women feel that their own flesh and blood should benefit from their hard work. And if I’m to be her ‘consort’, I’ll be damned if I’ll risk my neck and work my bollocks off smoothing the succession for anyone else’s brat. History’s full of examples of the eaglets in the nest getting tired of waiting nicely for their parents to kick the bucket, and deciding to help them along a bit; and it would be tiresome enough getting assassinated by my own offspring, let alone someone else’s whom I’ve sheltered and reared. Thanks but no thanks, on that one.

At this point Maddie finally decides to get in on the act.

“Commodore, do I understand you correctly?” she asks incredulously. “You’re planning to make Malcolm the _Emperor?_ ”

Tucker turns towards her. “With respect, Miss Reed, as things stand the Empire’s pretty well up for grabs an' I mean to put it into the hands of a guy who I believe is powerful enough to control it an' decent enough to straighten things out. Because you must know as well as I do that things have gotten pretty damn rotten, an’ it’s time someone tried to put them right.”

Her nostrils flare. “And you think _Malcolm_ is the man to do that?”

She couldn’t sound more incredulous if he’d been suggesting Vlad the Impaler. I mean, I’ll admit there have been similarities now and then, but even so it’s hardly flattering, now is it?

“He’s _your_ brother, Miss Reed. I’m sure you’re already aware of his qualities.”

Her glare transfers itself to me. “I stopped thinking of him as _my brother_ the day he made it compulsory for everyone in the Empire to watch him murder a man in cold blood.”

Ah. So that’s what the problem has been all these years. Even though I specifically ordered that my family were to be excused from watching it, there was no way they wouldn’t have heard about it, and knowing Maddie, being prevented from seeing it live probably made her determined to see it afterwards.

And so, even from the grave (or more accurately from whatever rather large portion of space is currently occupied by his dispersed atoms), Sallis still has the power to hurt me.

Cold blood? I suppose she’s right. I was colder than the heart of an Andorian glacier the day they finally brought him in front of the cameras; after all, they say revenge is best served cold. And another old saying is that ‘he who sows the wind will reap the whirlwind’, which is one he should probably have borne in mind when he had the brainwave about the weedy kid who used to pick a few wildflowers from lonely places now and then to give to his mum when his parents visited the school.

Still, it stings that Maddie thinks more of what that bastard had to endure at my hands than of what he might possibly have done to me to earn it. As bad as I was (and I’m not denying it), does she really think I would do _that_ to someone who didn’t deserve it?

I sit back a bit, and look at Mother and Father. The one looks at me impassively, the other is hard put to hide her misery. She’s ashamed of me too, and for all that she loves me she can’t bring herself to say it didn’t matter. He probably feels the same, but won’t admit it.

If I hadn’t already had this brought to the surface during my first, rather traumatic interview with Charles, wild horses probably couldn’t have dragged it out of me, but when I glance over at him now and get the slightest encouraging nod, I know I have to tell them. I suppose I’d rather that the commodore himself wasn’t here to listen, but I can hardly ask him to put his fingers in his ears and sing ‘La, la, la’ while I disembowel myself for my family’s benefit.

I think the commodore guesses that something’s going to come out, though. He touches my shoulder lightly. “Do you want me here for this, Mal?”

Well, no, I don’t, really. Though it seems a bit rude to admit it. But on the other hand I feel certain rather justifiable pangs of anxiety about the connection between the thing stuck inside my chest and the cuff on his wrist, and whether his leaving me here might have rather unfortunate consequences he hasn’t taken into account.

The light touch turns into a squeeze that I can interpret as significant. “It’s okay, Mal. You’ll be absolutely fine."

I nod.

"Daddy?" the commodore says briskly, fully expecting his father to leave with him. 

As the man in question leans forward to rise from his chair, I say, "I'd like _you_ to stay, sir, if you don't mind."

Charles looks up at the commodore, brows raised in question, and seeing him defer to his son raises the hairs on the back of my neck. I'm well aware of the position I've put myself in, submitting to a man who thinks of himself as subordinate to another whom I still deeply mistrust on many levels and with good reason. The commodore scowls back and forth between us a couple of times. Surely he is perplexed, but I think I also see a flash of green in his eyes that has nothing to do with the lush foliage that surrounds us. 

I can't really blame him for this hint of jealousy. I know I'm no prize, but it hardly seems fair that he has been working so hard to earn my trust and has made barely any headway while his father threw a knife at me, practically scared the piss out of me causing me to have a breakdown in front of half the Tucker clan, and somehow, has earned not just my trust, but my devotion. It doesn't help matters that I wouldn't be inclined to explain how that happened if I could find the words or that Charles apparently refuses to breathe a word of our conversations to the commodore. To the commodore's credit, he doesn't seem to have pressed his father too hard for information, and nor does he appear to have allowed my relationship with Charles to in any way create friction between himself and his father. 

Still, the frustration he must feel over his own failed efforts to get me to view him with anything other than contempt and suspicion must be mounting. Sooner or later, he's going to lose patience with me or just run out of time for playing his long game. Then we shall see just how strong the Tucker family ties are. Will the commodore be able to resist tapping into a ready resource for tips on taming the big, bad wolf? How far will he be willing to go to extract that information when the source is his own father? If he perceives his son is truly desperate, or perhaps in mortal danger, will Charles keep his word to me and maintain the confidentiality of our many conversations?

And what will I do when this break happens, _if_ it happens? Well. There's far more certainty about that than one might think. In the short term I may be helpless to do anything more than surrender to my fate, but the long term is another matter. 

The long term is another matter _entirely_. 

If the commodore causes any harm or suffering to his father, he will die a death so slow and painful he will wish I had sentenced him to life in an agony booth. If Charles betrays me, I will cut out his tongue before I rip out his throat. His death will be brutal, but quick, my way of honouring the friendship he offered me and his service as a confidant even though his ultimate failure must be punished. It doesn't matter how long it takes me to achieve a position where I can mete out their punishments or when or where I finally catch them; their fates, if they betray me now, are already written in stone on my heart.

But here and now, I'm not inclined to explain anything. It should be clear enough that Charles has already heard what I am about to say and that it is painful enough for me to repeat that I am enlisting him for moral support. Nobody needs to know that I have submitted to him as the alpha male of our little pack here in the bunker. Though I am sure he understands it on some instinctive level, I haven't fully explained it even to him.

I trust him more than I am capable of trusting anybody else right now. I trust his strength, that it will not be used against me unprovoked; his intentions, that they will bring me no harm; and his advice, that it will not lead me astray. For all that he has carefully avoided interfering with the commodore's plans for me, he has been just as deliberate about doing nothing to advance or promote them. In all our talks, he has never once suggested I give in and go along with his son, or even asked me why I don't. But if I were to let it be known how deep my trust for this one man runs, how complete my loyalty, how absolute my obedience, the darkness inside me suspects it wouldn't be long until I found myself Commodore Tucker's puppet and Charles the strings by which he makes me dance.

Schooling his face to a mask of neutral indifference, the commodore shrugs.

"I’ll be back in, say, half an hour?"


	11. 51-55

**Chapter Fifty-One**

**Origin Story**

_General Malcolm Reed_

As his son exits the conservatory, Charles Tucker rises and comes to stand just behind me and slightly to my right, which (quite the opposite of the usual suspicion and paranoia I experience when someone is behind me) gives me a sense of being tethered by a safety line so I can't fall too far into the abyss if I begin to slip.

My throat is locked, and it doesn’t decide to co-operate until the commodore has disappeared back into the lift and nothing terminal has happened to my insides. Maybe that’s because of mild apprehension that he’s simply forgotten my life quite literally depends on the unknown settings of whatever’s monitoring my whereabouts, or maybe it’s because I know that finally I have to explain to my family why I walked away from the career in the Royal Navy that lay before me like a shining ribbon to honour and success on the day I qualified at the Royal College.

So in a low, dogged voice, with Charles's solid, comforting presence at my back, I tell them about that afternoon in the grounds of Nottingham Old Hall. Not without halts and pauses that I need to compose myself even now, I tell them about what Sallis and his pals did to me. I tell them about the way that when the incident finally came to the notice of the staff because I collapsed from the pain and blood loss of my internal injuries, Sallis’s father had me treated in a private clinic and leaned on the Head to keep it quiet even from them. I tell them about the way the footage was passed around the school, and about the way it drove me to study and excel rather than socialise and endure the scorn, the pity, the sniggering. I tell them that it haunted my nightmares for years afterwards, warped my attitude to sex and effectively destroyed my ability to form normal relationships.. 

Then I tell them how the night before I accepted my commission in the Navy someone came to my room and attacked me, _drowned_ me in what should have been the safety of my own lodgings, before resuscitating me with the horror of water now added to the older horror, and making the thought of service on board ship now unthinkable. And how then, by the merest coincidence (I was so honourable then, so bloody _naïve!_ ), there came the offer of a career that would bring me power – power to finally hit back at those who had got away with everything scot-free. And that I accepted it, because in the Empire justice is for sale to the highest bidder, and the only thing more powerful than money is power itself.

“Everything that happened to me after that was as a direct result of what Sallis did to me,” I continue, my voice still quiet and flat, as it has been throughout; I’ve had the strangest illusion that I’ve been talking about someone else altogether. “He wasn’t responsible for the drowning, but he was responsible for my craving for revenge. It made me – vulnerable – to someone who was on the lookout for bright, solitary, angry young men. 

“I took that offer. I won’t go into what resulted from it. But you can believe that it transformed me into something that was very apt to the Empire’s purposes – something that obeyed orders, and killed, and became very powerful.

“In due course I met another man who had been through the same process, though with slightly different results. He now _gave_ orders, and killed, and became very powerful.”

They all know perfectly well whom I mean. Even now, Maddie looks around automatically before she breathes the name.

“We became lovers.” I don’t conceal the fact; whatever happened afterwards, I wasn’t ashamed of it then. I was _proud_ to be one of the two people he trusted, to be one of the Triad. “He offered me and – one other person – power. And we took it."

I take a deep breath, and look down at my hands. The left is still in Mother’s grasp, the right lying along my thighs, and I can feel the sweat on my hidden palms. “And I used that power to do what I’d promised all those years ago. I’d managed to arrange a fatal ‘accident’ for one of them before they left the school, but I hunted down the other five, one by one – and they paid for what they’d done to a six-year-old boy.

“Sallis was the one who had the idea in the first place. I reserved a special hell for him. He had to pay for the pain and the humiliation, but he also had to pay for what I’d lost because of that day, as well as for what I’d become – and for what I’d done because of what I’d become.

“I don’t say that _his_ responsibility exonerates me of any of mine. I’ve never claimed that, or believed it. But he set the chain reaction in motion, and I wanted everyone in the Empire to see his punishment. I thought that would ... would finally put my demons to rest.”

I had thought so. And I suppose in a way it did, but instead of satisfaction there was just a cold, empty, echoing space where the lust for revenge had been. And nothing I could do afterwards filled it, though recently (even if I refuse to admit it aloud) it seems strangely less empty when an insignificant lieutenant by the name of Cutler is curled up alongside me.

“So, you deserve an explanation, and now you have it.” I raise my head, and look each of them in the face. “Those were my reasons for what I did, and you may or may not feel them adequate, but that’s your decision. If you decide you never want to see me or hear from me again, the commodore will arrange for you to be returned home at once. You’ll still be protected, as you have been all this time, but I’ll honour your wishes. It’s as simple as that.”

 _“‘Simple’?”_ The word bursts from Maddie’s throat; judging by the way she’s leaning forward in her chair, wringing the ends of her scarf between her hands, she wishes she had hold of my throat instead. “You’re a murderer, Malcolm, just a cold-blooded murderer!

“I haven’t heard you say one word, _one word_ , of being sorry for what you’ve done. All the lives you’ve ruined, the other people you’ve killed and tortured! You talk as if what those boys did was justification for what you did as a man, when you should have been capable of putting it into the proper perspective rather than – than behaving as some kind of _animal!_ ”

‘Some kind of animal’. A little desperately, I look from her to Mother and Father. Maybe the bonds of parenthood are stronger than the love of a sibling, because although Mother’s face is wet with tears she is still holding my hand, and Father – although clearly waiting to see how I respond to this accusation – has not turned away from me.

“Some kind of animal?” There’s a lump in my throat as I say the words aloud. Although I’ve deliberately chosen to spare my family the details of what was done to me by Harris’s order, and even this doesn’t change my mind, by the end of that process that was _exactly_ what I was. Maybe it’s what I still am, and you never know, maybe it’s what I always will be: something separated from humanity, from normality. From every other member of the human race.

“Malcolm.” Mother squeezes my fingers, and pats them helplessly with her other hand; maybe more shows in my face than it would have done if I weren’t so bloody reduced. “No, Malcolm, no, we don’t think that for a minute!”

“That’s _exactly_ what I think!” says Maddie viciously.

“And what do you think, Father?”

He takes his time. Judgement in the Reed household is never hurried.

“You have not, over the past years, upheld the highest standards of the British Armed Forces,” he says finally, in measured tones. “In the light of our family tradition, I cannot do other than deplore that failure.

“But it would appear that you were effectively press-ganged into the service of a Foreign Power. In those circumstances, and under influences that were so overwhelmingly malign, I cannot in justice conclude that you were entirely to blame.

“To the best of my knowledge and belief, Commodore Tucker is a worthy man, with laudable intentions. I am confident, Malcolm, that given sufficient time, you will be able to voluntarily – and, I trust, sincerely – commit yourself to following and furthering his aims. Moreover, when that time comes, I suspect you will do so gladly, and feel the better for it.

"That his father, who instilled in him the values of kindness, compassion, respect and honour, has accepted you as one of his own tells me that in spite of the evil you have done, you have not yet entirely abandoned those values yourself and that you are still a Reed at heart, and still my son.”

“I’m glad to hear you say that, sir.” The commodore's voice comes quietly from behind me. I don’t know how long he’s been there, or how much he’s heard, but the uncertainty doesn’t worry me as much as it probably should.

Tradition is the God of the Reed household, and though we are not descended from the ancient nobility, my father, being staunchly egalitarian, still takes it on faith that we are equal to any who are, even in the face of a world that insists more adamantly with each passing year that some are more equal than others. With my father's acceptance still ringing in my ears, and given his high praise for Charles Tucker, I think he will approve the gesture I am about to make. I only hope that he and the others here present will understand that I am doing it honestly, out of a genuine desire to … learn, grow, _change_ ? I honestly don't know _what_ I want, but it's certainly something more than earning my father's approval with an empty gesture.

I turn my wheelchair, propel myself over to Charles and with some difficulty slither out onto my knees in front of him. He glances from my father to the commodore and shuffles his feet a bit. With dread I realise now that I will howl out my outrage and shame if he rejects my appeal and defers to his son, the display precipitating a far more detailed explanation of my MACO training on Wolfplanet Mindfuck than I had ever intended to give _anybody_ . After that, Maddie will know just what kind of _animal_ her older brother has become. Surely, he will have _some_ idea what it is I am asking of him, and understanding that, he _must_ know that the responsibility cannot be transferred, even to a favourite son.

This is immensely difficult. I’m daring to believe – daring to _risk_ believing – that things can be different; that _I_ can be different; that there can be some kind of safety in being other than a human wrecking ball. For the first time in my adult life I’m putting faith in something I can’t see, something I can’t prove. After all the years of bitter experience it’s as much as I can do to contemplate this gesture, but it seems to me that _if_ there’s ‘something else’ there, _if_ there’s another way to exist rather than in a constant state of frenzied fight for survival against everyone and everything, I need to … try.

If I’m proved wrong, this time, there will be no possibility of redemption. If I survive the discovery of my error I will go to my death frozen solid, dealing out vengeance on anything and anyone I can touch, so cold inside that even the fires of the Hell I’d be destined for (if such a place does indeed exist) would never thaw me out. But the dream being held out feels like some kind of second chance at life, and if I’m to even reach out for the possibility it may exist, I need help. As much as it hurts, as much as my worst inner nature is still screaming at me for a fool to be taken in like this and to trust those who still _want me for something_ , who still want to _use_ me, the sensation of warmth after the years of being a monster carved out of ice has been so alluring, so _intoxicating_ , that it’s coaxed (duped?) me into this position.

I find in this moment that helps to remember how, not so very long ago, when I kicked in the panel on that biobed, I did it with the understanding and the certainty that I would die, and I _welcomed_ it. Even knowing that I’d never so much as thought to do anything to try and restore myself to something worthy of anything other than fear and abhorrence, and that, if there was any such thing as an afterlife, mine would surely be one of eternal, continued suffering.

Yes, in what I believed to be my last moments, I became – let’s not say religious, for that requires some degree of dedication – but willing to believe, possibly even hope, that something of us might live on when our corporeal existence has ended. It’s hard, when you’re standing on the lip of the crevasse of unknowing you’re about to step willingly into, to take that last step still believing there will be _nothing_ afterwards.

And _yes,_ I was willing to face the possibility of eternal damnation over the continued torture and betrayal heaped upon me by the people I thought I loved most in _this_ world.

I suppose, at least for me, that old saw ‘there are no atheists in foxholes’ might hold true. But I have to be honest with myself, too. I’m no longer in the foxhole, and I am _far_ too practical and _far_ too demanding of instant gratification to contemplate even the slightest change in who I am and how I comport myself for the _possibility_ of a slightly less miserable experience in an afterlife that I’m not remotely convinced exists now that I’m not facing my imminent demise. If I’m going to do all the work in this life, I bloody well want to reap the rewards now, too. The prospect of putting myself through the kind of mincer that turning myself around will involve, for no more than a distant hope that my debts in the afterlife (if any) may be reduced accordingly, isn’t nearly enough to attract me. And however mercenary that makes me sound, I’ve never lied to myself while I was in power and I’m not going to start now.

There is another old adage that tells us ‘Life is suffering.’ Well, I am alive, and I’m suffering now, have been, for a very long time, and frankly don’t expect it to ever stop no matter what I do. The best I can hope for is that the _nature_ of that suffering and the quality of my existence _might_ change. In this moment, I am trapped, caught in that agonizing, paralyzing moment of decision, choosing between what I know and what might be. 

Do I try? Do I ask for help? Do I make the effort to become something different, and making that effort, do I dare hope that my past is not insurmountable, that my frozen core might someday thaw and eventually, I can become, if not the man I had hoped to be when I took the salute at the Imperial Naval College, then something like him, older, wiser, shrewder and less trusting, but...not loathsome? Do I take that risk?

Or do I _pretend_ to try? As my physical strength returns, I have more energy to power my mind and, as clever as she is, I think I could actually manage to fool Ginny soon. So, instead of accepting the help that’s been offered, do I instead _act_ the part of the novice seeking guidance and instruction? Do I play along with Commodore Tucker’s scheme, let him physically rehabilitate me, restore me to my previous station, possibly even elevate me to the position of the Empress’s consort, and then revert to the frozen bastard I’ve been all these years and snuff out all those who helped me in good faith for the unforgivable sin of seeing my weakness?

Ginny was right, the old General Reed was comfortable, he was predictable. He was predictably a bastard, and I can’t deny a part of me finds the prospect of annihilating all those who’ve tried to help me through my recovery deeply soothing. It’s like the proverbial tree falling in the forest. If no one who saw me struggling and suffering survives, then did it ever really happen?

I could go back, it wouldn’t be difficult, but I realize I don’t actually want to, and I’ve never been one to take the easy way out of anything; though if this frail, foolish possibility on which I’ve finally placed my foot fails me, my second fall into Hell will be possibly even more terrible than the first, and what emerges from it even worse. I can’t stay where I am, balanced on an incredibly narrow ledge of possibility with the winds of inevitable change eroding the crumbling rock beneath my feet. If I’m to go forward, I will need help. And Charles is the person to whom I’ve already submitted in the way my Pack nature dictates, and he’s already offered me his support. However painful – no, _agonising_ – the public statement of that need and that submission may be to my supposed position of invincibility as the sole remaining member of the Triad, even just before these people so closely connected to me, it’s something that feels required.

I lower my eyes, bow my head, and fold my hands in my lap, my posture every inch that of a supplicant. My emotions have been scraped so raw by everything that has happened to me that in my current mood of humility I’m prepared to plead with him to accept me, if that’s what it takes. With horror I realise I’ve already committed myself so deeply to hope that things _can_ be different for me that I’m actually willing to abase myself that much; but first I will ask, as sincerely as I can.

It’s wholly possible that Charles has never heard of the ancient tradition of fostering as practised in medieval Britain, so I start off by explaining the concept.

"A thousand years ago, it was an established tradition among the noble households of my homeland to foster their children out to other families when they reached a certain age. The family ties remained intact, but the children were sent away to improve their education. The idea was that one could learn more from teachers who were not one's own parents – partly because, being free from the hindrance of familial affection, the foster parents found it easier to be strict when necessary, and partly because, being under formal contract to train and educate the child, they would make a more concentrated effort to do so.

"My parents did right by me. They were adequately strict and set the highest standards I could possibly be expected to achieve. Although they did not smother me with expressions of affection, I never doubted their love. They did everything right, and they did everything parents could possibly do.

"Then the events of my life intervened. They fouled my compass and blew me far off the course my parents had helped me set. There was a time when I never would have dreamed of doing anything to dishonour them, but now, I can't remember the last thing I did that wouldn't.”

I pause and take a deep breath. I’ve rehearsed this often enough, but honesty at this depth is flaying. For so long I’ve taken refuge in the mentality of _It’s them or me_ – Wolfplanet Mindfuck merely cemented the savage I’d become, it didn’t create it – but finally acknowledging my own fall from everything I’d ever dreamed of being is still cruelly hard. And yet, I owe this; to myself as well as to them. Because until you’re honest about exactly where you are, any meaningful movement is impossible. Even if I ultimately fail in this reckless attempt to reclaim something of the self I might have been, at least I’ll have admitted that none of my ruin was their fault. So I go on steadily.

"The fact that they still claim me as their own says everything about the kind of loving, compassionate parents they are and have always been and nothing about the kind of son I have become.

"The day we met, without in any way discounting all my parents had done for me, you offered me a place in your family. You had no intention of usurping their role in my life; you were just offering me an additional support as I try to find my way again.

"Please, let me accept that offer now. My mother and father have done their part. They've done as much as they could do. Foster me, even though I'm no child, no longer impressionable. Even though I'm stubborn, often angry, usually ungrateful, and always, _always_ difficult, take me into your household and teach me the lessons I failed to master, remind me of the ones I've forgotten along the way.

“I know that in a lot of ways I’m still _trying_ to learn, _trying_ to change. I’ll probably fall back at some point, maybe spectacularly. I can’t promise I’ll ever be a model human being. But I’m asking you to take me in, and take the chance."

I look up at his face, and it’s a little puzzled, a little thoughtful, but solemn. He doesn’t know how to respond, but understands this is something that matters deeply to me.

After a moment he reaches out and cups my face between his massive hands. His palms feel dry and cool. Just as he did that first day, he leans forward and places a kiss on my forehead.

“I'll take you in," he says, "an' I'll accept you as my son, as much as any boy I ever raised, provided your parents approve.”

I turn and look anxiously at Father. From the corner of my eye, I see Mother doing the same. In the Reed household, Father's word is law, even if sometimes Mother might be the one to suggest what his word should be. If his mind is already made up, he won't even consult her. 

Perhaps he thinks he knows what she wants for me. Perhaps he believes he already knows what I need. Whatever the case, he assents with a single, solemn nod of his head.

Charles pulls me to my feet and we hug, completely unselfconscious. It’s hardly the way one would imagine a medieval fosterage contract being sealed, but this is the _patriarch_ of the Tucker clan, and I am one of them now, and still also a Reed, and so I joyfully accept this confirmation of my new dual status – even as a small, mischievous voice whispers gleefully that this makes me the commodore's older brother, and therefore entitled to boss him around.

(Well. Technically.)

When we separate, Charles carefully steadies me as I get back into my wheelchair (my pins aren’t up to holding me for long yet, and kneeling wasn’t fun) and then steps back as I turn around to my family.

Father doesn’t do hugs. I salute him in the naval style (after all these years, I still remember how to do it properly) and he returns it. Mother’s hug is enough for both of them, and almost tips me out of my wheelchair – fortunately Charles and the commodore are close and quick enough to grab the handles before I end up faceplanted in her lap.

That leaves Maddie. When Mother finally releases me, I look around.

The remaining chair is empty.

With a stifled curse, Commodore Tucker goes over to the comm. panel and slaps the emergency button. Then he presses the transmit button and shouts over the blaring alarm, "Lock 'er down!"

By the time he gets out into the corridor, Corporal Cole and two other MACOs have arrived. I’m relieved to hear that his instructions are quite clear: Maddie is _not,_ under any circumstances, to be treated as a hostile. "If she's too upset when you find her, call Liz Cutler an' tell her she might need a sedative. Only stun her if she seems like she's about to hurt herself an' you can't reach her in time to prevent it."

As they disperse to begin their search, he calls after them, "An' turn that damned alarm off!"

Apparently, Corporal Cole has the ability to control the alarm system remotely because it falls silent as the commodore returns to the conservatory muttering, "We really need to install a yellow alert option. Not every emergency requires everybody to run around like their hair is on fire."

Taking the handles of my chair, he says, "I assume you want to help in the search?"

"Yes, if I won't slow you down."

"You won't," he says, and then with a slightly amused tone, he adds, "‘Long as you don't apply those brakes unexpectedly again." Looking to his father, he says, "Daddy?"

"I'll wait here with Admiral and Mrs. Reed, boys," he assures us.

Calling over his shoulder as we roll out, the commodore says, "We'll be back as soon as we find her."

I wait until we're out of the conservatory before I ask, a bit tensely, "Do you mind telling me why my sister's wandering off constitutes an emergency?"

"This place is supposed to be _abandoned_ , Malcolm," he explains. "It's an old nuclear test site from the 1950's. They neutralized the radiation decades ago, but the land is still sterile an' the amount of water that isn't too far from the surface to be practically accessible isn’t enough to sustain any significant population. We actually put a lot of work into _makin'_ it look like a dump. So, as far as the Empire knows, nobody comes here but squatters, vagrants, an' desert rats. If General Reed's little sister appears on a satellite image an' gets recognized … Christ!" 

Well, yes, put it that way, this is a very serious matter. He doesn't even have a colourful expression to describe how much trouble we'd be in. Anyone who did recognise her would want to know exactly what she was doing here – which would lead to even more, and extremely awkward, questions being asked. 

"Also, I _am_ a bit concerned for Maddie's safety," he continues. "She's at no risk of glowin' in the dark, but most of the structures above _an'_ below ground are unstable; an' while I can tell she's smart enough not to venture into one of the blast craters, the edges of them _have_ been known to crumble away underfoot."

"Bloody hell," I mutter. I was always protective of my little sister as a boy, and her continued animosity toward me notwithstanding, it seems the events of the day have brought that instinct to the fore once again. There's a tight knot of anxiety growing in my stomach as I worry about her being in danger.

"You know your sister, Malcolm. Would she go outside or hole up somewhere here in the bunker?"

"She's not stupid," I say, not even having to think about it. "If she knows she's in the desert, she wouldn't go outside without adequate water and protection from the sun."

"I'm here!" calls a thick, tear-choked voice, and Maddie, with her face all blotchy and wet, slips out from behind a collection of rubbish bins. Walking toward us, dragging her feet with every step like a child who knows she's in trouble, she looks at the commodore and says petulantly, "I'm sorry I worried you. I didn't go outside."

"That's all right, Miss Reed," he replies, smiling kindly and with relief. "But it would be best if you don’t wander unescorted around the facility. There's things here you probably shouldn't see."

I look up at him sharply. Bad enough he brought my family out of their protective bubbles for a visit, but to have exposed them….

"Nothin' dangerous, in an' of itself," he says, derailing my angry thoughts, which he probably divines without much trouble, "but things of such a nature, that some people, if they knew you'd seen them, might do terrible things to get the details."

"Secret projects, you mean," Maddie guesses.

"That’s right."

"All right then," she says, sounding a bit chastened. "I won't wander off again."

She looks down at me in my chair, and I give the commodore a jerk of my head which he correctly interprets to mean _sod off for a bit, will you?_

"I'll let your parents know we've found you," he says to Maddie. "I'd appreciate it if you'd help your brother get back to the conservatory." Then he walks away.

Dropping to her knees before me, Maddie rests her hands on my lap and looks up at me. Speaking to me – not exactly kindly, but at least without active hostility, for the first time since she's been here, she asks, "Malcolm, why didn't you ever _tell_ anyone?"

I exhale, and try to send my mind back to what passed for reasoning after that afternoon. Of course, Sallis had threatened me with what else they would do to me if I told anyone, and that in itself had kept me quiet until I haemorrhaged and went into shock from blood loss. After that, Mr. Colyngbourne the Head Teacher had come to see me in the private room in the hospital, and together with a couple of the other senior members of staff had impressed it on me how much trouble I would cause for everyone (including, by implication, me) if the story got out; how mortified my family would be to have me the centre of such a scandal. How the story would follow me around, possibly for years, and how much better it would be for everyone if I was brave enough to keep my mouth shut.

At six, you believe adults know best and you trust them, however foolishly, to want what's best for you. I was already conscious, even at that age, of being undersized and prone to illness. Absolutely the _last_ thing I wanted was to give Mother any more reason to worry and Father any more reason to be ashamed of me.

“I was too ashamed,” I say in a low voice. “I blamed myself for not being able to stop it from happening. And the school ... the school just wanted it hushed up.”

Her eyes flash. “Weren’t they punished _at all?_ ”

I know her anger is not for me, but for the boy I was, and I’m grateful that she still has any feeling at all for either of us.

“Sallis was moved to another school; I think they worried I might be so traumatised seeing him around the place that I might not be able to stop myself from blurting something out. The others, well, they more or less said he’d forced them into taking part, so they got pretty well let off.”

She looks down for a minute, and then up again, searchingly. “You do know the place burned down a few years later.”

I hold her gaze, keeping my own opaque. “I heard about it.”

“And several members of staff died in the fire.”

“Old Colyngbourne among them.”

I know what she wants me to say. Or rather, to deny. But that was the year that I came back from Wolfplanet Mindfuck, and any capacity I’d ever had to forgive those who’d wronged me had been long lost.

“I hope you’re not expecting me to say I was heartbroken about it,” I say with a shrug. “But at the time I’d been off-world for special training and been promoted to Staff Sergeant. Believe you me, I had a lot more on my plate to worry about than what those cowardly bastards had done over twenty years ago.”

“Of course,” she says, relieved. “You wrote to Aunt Sherrie that you were appointed control of a platoon when their own officer was killed.”

I give a grunt and a roll of the eyes that indicate something of what a task I’d been given. It would probably have been a lot worse if the story of the Battle of Training Room Six hadn’t passed into legend by then, but it still wasn’t easy. I had to deal out a few more examples of my version of ‘discipline’ before it was accepted that failing to obey any order I took it into my head to give was extremely hazardous to health – and, occasionally, to life and limb.

“Shall we go back to the conservatory before they have Commodore Tucker sending out a search party?” I ask. “You know Mother. She always worries.”

For one moment she hesitates, and I hold my breath. Then she gives a sigh, and I know with a mixture of shame and triumph that she has chosen to believe me. After all, back then I was a relatively junior officer in the service of the Empire, stationed at the other side of the world.

What chance could I possibly have had to organise a deadly arson attack on a school in the heart of the Nottinghamshire countryside?

* * *

**Chapter Fifty-Two**

**Decision Time**

_General Malcolm Reed_

Oh, bliss.

It’s time for Doktor Frankenstein to get into action on me again.

“No,” I snarl. “I’m not consenting to general anaesthesia. I don’t care what you say, I’m not consenting. End of.”

Despite my agreement to become an honorary member of the Tucker clan, that doesn’t mean I’m likely to surrender my judgement on everything pertaining to me. Every proposition put to me is still going to be inspected from every angle, just in case, and this one sets off so many alarm bells I’m nearly deafened by the clamour. I may have gone briefly sentimental but I definitely haven’t gone stupid, and this foreign world of ‘trust’ is one I still explore with the deepest suspicion.

After what happened the last time I was put ‘out’, I’ll go to hell and be damned before I agree to it happening again. Bloody Trip Tucker wants me for something, and this could so easily be the moment where I wake up and find out precisely what.

I had enough of that last time – and I still remember in my nightmares exactly how I found out.

“Malcolm, that would be the least stressful route,” Liz says earnestly. “This is major surgery.”

I scowl at her across my defensively crossed arms. I don’t think she’s deliberately ‘in on it’ (if there is an ‘it’), but she’s so trusting, she’d be easy to deceive. “No.”

Tucker and Salazar exchange expressive glances, and the doctor heaves a sigh of resignation. “If we can’t change your mind on that, General, Ah’ll give you a spinal block. You’ll be fully conscious during the procedure.

“But Ah’ll make one proviso. If Ah think you’re startin’ to panic, or go ‘out’ mentally for any reason – if you do anything but stay calm an’ co-operate – then Ah’ll sedate you whether you like it or not. For your own good, as well as everyone else’s, so Ah can finish the job Ah’ve started.”

“Last thing we want is for you to start kickin’ off in the middle of major surgery, Malcolm,” Tucker interjects drily. “Those're your options – take ‘em or leave ‘em.”

I sit back on the bio-bed, my face stony; it’s obvious I’ll get nowhere arguing, because even I can’t be sure of keeping control of my behaviour under this much mental pressure. “Very well,” I growl. “I don’t seem to have any choice.”

Salazar gives me a speculative look, then, that makes me go cold all over. Is he already planning to just knock me out once I’m prostrated and helpless on his surgical table? If he does, there’s no hole in the Empire, not even the pit of Hell itself, that’s deep enough for him to hide in. I found Sallis, I’ll find him, too.

“Ah can tell you’re feelin’ boxed in, General,” he tells me, and I don’t try to deny it. I may not like it, but I’ve grown a very little bit used to some of my concerns and worries showing, however much I may try to conceal them. Ginny has been hammering away at the idea that sometimes it’s ok to let people know you’re afraid. I can’t say that _I_ agree with her, but I can accept the fact that _other people_ apparently do.

“In a couple of weeks, Ah’ll come back and we can talk more about the surgery and what you can expect during your recovery,” Salazar continues. “Then we’ll set a date. Maybe between now and then, you can talk to Doctor East and get some advice on what techniques would be most helpful to enhance your calm so I _don’t_ have to put you under.”

I can’t deny that’s a good idea, and I nod thoughtfully. It is possible he really _doesn’t_ _want_ to do anything to me against my will, since presumably he too watched my expertise with a scalpel of my own and doesn’t fancy being my next subject.

And since Ginny is also so adamant that it’s good to ask for help (though honestly, I’m not _really_ asking, and help isn’t _exactly_ what I want), doing so will probably earn me a few extra Brownie points with her.

“I do have one demand, though, and it’s non-negotiable.” I turn my face to Tucker, and it’s set hard. “I want you to be there. By the bedside. From start to finish.”

This startles everyone. I know, and I’d imagine Miguel does too, that Tucker is not comfortable with the insides of the human body. Without doubt Liz does; she flinches as though I’d kicked a kitten.

Still, the commodore controls his reaction. His arms are already folded, but apart from that he lifts a mildly inquisitive eyebrow. “Any chance of tellin’ me exactly what for?” 

My gaze is cold, my voice flat. "Penance."

Now he gives me a startled, hurt look, as if _he_ is the kitten Liz thinks I kicked. I don't need to tell him what I mean by _penance_. I'm sure he knows, and I'm just as certain he's happy not to have me air this particular grievance in front of his brother-in-law. So he leaves it alone and acquiesces to my demand with nothing more than an inclination of his head.

The truth is, I’m killing two birds with one stone with this demand. While part of me does want to punish Tucker – torture him, in effect – by making him face the abomination that he facilitated, I also know he’ll do his best to help me remain calm during the procedure. I don’t allow myself to think about that – why I’m so sure he will, or why it will be particularly helpful; I just clamp my jaws and demand it.

Leaving this to sink in, I turn my vindictive mood towards the world in general in the direction of Damien, asking what happened to the baby. 

I’m deliberately putting Tucker in a difficult situation here. _I_ know the little bastard was euthanised, because I overheard the conversation. Unless things have changed since, however, Tucker and Liz have conspired to deceive Miguel on that score, telling him that the baby was stillborn. But he has _also_ promised not to lie to me ... now this should be interesting. And revealing. Which way will the bunny jump, I wonder?

"He…didn't make it," Liz tells me. Unnecessarily, because I’d surely have heard something about it by now if it had.

"I don't understand." It’s so much fun, watching her and Tucker squirm. I don't even care if they actually know that I overheard their conversation that first time I woke up; I'll just claim I don't remember. "I thought it was perfectly healthy,” I continue, my voice earnest and innocent, with even an artistic touch of anxiety. “Any fatal deformities should have shown up on the medical scanners. Surely Phlox wouldn't have continued with the experiment if there was something wrong with it?" 

"Ah examined the child, General," Doctor Salazar says, and I have to bite my lip to avoid grinning triumphantly when I realize that the commodore is willing to let his brother-in-law innocently lie for him. "He was severely deformed and died shortly after birth. It appears that Doctor Phlox–" 

"We euthanized him." The commodore cuts in brutally, to my complete astonishment. 

" _What?_ " Salazar barks in indignant surprise. 

"We'll talk about this later, Miguel." Tucker gives me a Look – he’s not in the least deceived by my malicious playfulness, and he’s not going to give me a ringside seat at the family reckoning.

"Oh, you bet your lily-white ass we will, bro," the doctor responds with a clear threat in his tone, but he seems to understand that it’s more important right now to let the commodore deal with me. After all, I’m the bereaved parent – I’m entitled to an explanation. It’ll help the grieving process.

"The transporter couldn't cope with two life forms when one was in the act of givin’ birth to the other," Tucker explains, though the note of hard-held patience is clear in his voice; he knows far better than Salazar does just how much of a heartbroken parent I am not. "It flagged the baby as a parasite an' tried to filter him out. Once the operator persuaded it that he was a separate, livin' bein', it flagged some of his DNA as parasitic an' tried to filter _that_ out, effectively tryin' to tear him apart _in transit_ . By the time the operator convinced it to bring _all of him_ through his pattern had become corrupted, and he materialized with multiple, terrible deformities. His life would have been short an’ painful. We made it shorter an’ less painful. _It was the most humane thing we could do_." He says the last bit while staring hard at Doctor Salazar. 

I'm not sure why I say what I do next; perhaps because I’m so shocked by Tucker's honesty, despite the problems it will cause him with his brother-in-law, perhaps because I want to knock the self-righteous Salazar off his high horse where he sits on his moral high ground and drag him down into the muck with the rest of us. "It's probably for the best," I say piously. Of course, this brings all of their eyes to me. "You have to understand, Doctor," I continue, managing to inject just the right amount of disdain into the title to make Salazar wince without tipping him off that such was my intent. He probably thinks he's just receiving the overflow of my resentment of Phlox, and maybe he is, since he still hasn't really done anything yet to deserve my wrath. "That child, regardless of its physical condition or mental capacity, would never have lived a normal life."

"But even so…"

"But _nothing!_ " I interrupt him, suddenly icily furious as the memories rush over me in a sickening wave. They know nothing about this, _nothing_ – how dare they make moral judgements on a situation they don’t have the faintest understanding of? "It wasn't a normal child, it was a human-alien hybrid, conceived not in some daft act of love, or lust, or even raucous debauchery, but in a precisely planned, coldly calculated _assault_ , the likes of which you should be grateful you only _think_ you can imagine. It was created in a test tube and implanted in me as a parasite, during an episode of repeated and violent rape, as part of an experiment to oppress, possibly even exterminate and supplant, humanity.

“You’re thinking of it, you’re _talking_ of it, as if it were a human child, as if it could have been rescued – as if it was open to reason, to kindness, as if it was _one of us!_ Well take it from me, and I know as much as anyone except Alpha himself could possibly know, that wasn’t the case.

“If things had gone to plan, it would not have been raised as a child but trained as a princeling, taught to rule, to kill and to conquer. As soon as he reached sexual maturity, he would have been made to breed with multiple partners or his sperm would have been harvested for artificial insemination. His bloodline would have been spread, forcibly and throughout the Empire, his DNA mass-pattern bombed into the human genome. 

“After eighteen or twenty years, give or take, he'd have challenged his father – and by ‘father’, I mean his sperm donor, not me, the incubator that kept him alive for his first nine months; he would have challenged his father for supremacy, because given his genetic make-up he could do absolutely nothing else. Only one of them would have survived the fight, and that one would have spent the rest of his life watching over his shoulder for the next upstart kinsman to attack him. And so it would go on, and on, and on, the disease of their life cycle spreading throughout the whole bloody empire. Don’t kid yourselves it would have stopped with humanity, either; Phlox was already experimenting with combining Alpha’s DNA with Klingon, and I’m guessing that once he’d got that done it’d have been a short step to Vulcans and Romulans. You just think what _that_ little trick would have achieved if it had succeeded.”

Looking from Tucker to Cutler and back again, I say, my voice like iron, "You did the right thing, and not just for me."

* * *

**Chapter Fifty-Three**

**Argument**

_Lieutenant (j.g.) Elizabeth Cutler_

"There was no way we could save him, Miguel," Trip begins fast-talking the moment we're in the corridor and out of earshot of Malcolm's room. "An' we didn't even know how to tell if we could keep him comfortable, so I gave the order…"

"Don't you dare, Trip!" I snarl before he can say another word. As much as I usually appreciate his protective nature and admire his integrity for taking responsibility for everything that happens under his command, this is bullshit, and I'm not having it. "Don't you _fucking_ dare!"

"Liz, I…"

"You're _lying_ ," I say, then I turn to Miguel. "He wasn’t even there. He didn't know what was happening until Corporal Cole reported in, and by then it was already over. It was _my_ decision. Mine alone. I drew up a syringe full of the electrolyte concentrates they were pumping into Malcolm and injected them through the umbilical cord so it would look like an overdose had crossed the placental barrier. If I was ever questioned, I planned on explaining that I caught it in time to reverse it in Malcolm, but the baby had already died."

I'm sobbing already, and I don't even care. It was the worst thing I've ever done in my life – An act of mercy! My god, the irony! – and I haven't been able to talk about it with anyone since the day it happened. Trip and Miguel are trying hard to understand me; they'll get the gist of it.

"Cole suggested it, once she understood how sick he was, and I completed the procedure. She asked if he was in pain, and I told her he more than likely was. She asked if he would survive, and I told her no.

"I asked all the questions that are required, Miguel. Was she speaking for the patient? She didn't understand what was happening at first, but when I explained that someone has to act as guardian and advocate, she said yes! 

"Then I asked her if she understood that he was dying and couldn't be saved and if she thought something should be done to prevent his suffering, and she said yes!

"So I asked her if she understood that once I started the procedure it couldn't be stopped, and she said yes!

"And when I asked her if she thought it was the most humane thing we could do for him, she said yes! And if she says anything differently if you ask her now, she's a lying cunt!

"So _I_ did it! _Me!_ Without a Doctor's authorization! Without him even having a proper name!" I turn to Trip then, and glare at him through my tears. " _I_ did it, and it broke my heart, and you don't get to take that away from me, even if you are trying to protect me!"

He draws me into a hug. I'm still mad at him for trying to cover up what I did, so I try to punch him a couple of times, but he's holding me too close for me to get much force behind it. Then I realize that I don't want to hurt him, and just let him hold me while I sob for a minute or two. Eventually, I regain some degree of control and manage to clean myself up with a tissue before I turn to address Miguel again.

" _He_ doesn't get to take responsibility for what I did, and _you_ don't get to have an opinion," I say defiantly. "You saw that baby when we came in, and I'm sure you examined him after Malcolm was stable. There's no way in hell you can look me in the eye and tell me there is one single thing we could have done to make that baby's life easier."

"Nurse Cutler…"

"If I thought Cole was wrong I would have argued against it, but the truth is, I was relieved when she suggested it."

"Liz…"

"I've worked with you long enough to know your position on things like this," I plough on, not willing to let him speak until I've had my say. "So if you want to try to have me prosecuted, you go right ahead. I'd like to see you fucking try to bring a case in court."

"Sweetheart…"

"I euthanized that child, Doctor Salazar," I declare, "and, all things being equal, I'd do it again, if I knew it meant my life." And suddenly I'm shattered again, but manage to choke out, "Because it was the only way to stop his suffering."

This time Miguel is the one to wrap his arms around me. 

"Ah might have a few words for my brother-in-law 'bout puttin' you in that situation, darlin', but Ah'm not gonna try to have you prosecuted. Ah'm certain you did the very best you could do for that child under the circumstances."

I'm still crying too hard to say anything, so after a minute, he shakes me gently. "You hear me?"

I nod, and I feel him scoop me up off my feet; and hours later, I wake up in my own bed in my quarters.

It's the middle of the night, and Elaine is there. 

"It's all right, sweet pea," she coos at me. "You go on back to sleep. If you need to talk about anything, I'll be around in the mornin'."

"'M still mad at Trip," I pout.

"I know, sweetheart, but try to keep in mind, his heart's usually in the right place, even when he has his head up his ass."

That language coming from Elaine is enough to shock me awake. I look at her, and she gives me a smile and a wink. I can't help but giggle. She's right of course, and as quickly as I realize that, I'm over being angry. Trip wasn't trying to whitewash the terrible thing I'd done that I was – probably still _am_ – struggling to accept; he was just trying to protect me from prosecution. I'm an adult and a professional. If I was having trouble living with what I'd had to do, I should have asked for help. Trip is probably the busiest man in the Empire now that Malcolm's out of commission, and he's doing well to slip a clandestine visit to this abandoned bunker in the American desert in amongst his duties on the station and his meetings with the Empress and the admirals. It wasn't fair of me to expect him to notice that I was struggling and force the help on me.

"Actually, I think I should probably talk to Ginny," I realize.

"That's fine, little girl," Elaine says sympathetically, "but for now, you go on back to sleep."

I do, and with a smile on my face.

* * *

**Chapter Fifty-Four**

**Connection**

_General Malcolm Reed_

“Tell me something, Mistah Tucker," I say. 

He grunts and hikes his brows inquisitively, as if he's really interested.

Every now and then he still makes a house-call to see how I’m getting on, and today is no different, except perhaps that the gesture appears a little more thoughtful than usual considering he’s coming right back here the day after tomorrow. We drink coffee and talk about unimportant things, mostly, and now and again he touches on the idea that I’ve nothing to fear from him, and just as regularly I smile politely and disbelieve him.

A thought has suddenly occurred to me that puts me on edge. Actually, I should say it quite frightens me given just hours ago we met with Miguel to finalize plans and set the date for my pending surgery. He's not going to like the question, but if he really means all the crap he's been spouting the past few months, he'll understand my concern and give me an honest answer.

"Your brother-in-law, ah, he wouldn't happen to be the surgeon who did your, er..." I just gesture toward my face. A year ago, I wouldn't have had any problem making some insulting remark about the disfigurement that I had caused, but I'm beginning to realize that a lot has changed.

I see a flash of anger in his eyes when he cottons on to what I'm asking. I can't blame him. It's not like I don't remember him grinding his boot down on my fingers when my hand begins to ache during target practice, or, these days, from holding my cards while Liz beats me at gin rummy.

But then he snorts, and it's followed by a deep, throaty chuckle. He's actually amused, and his anger has evaporated just that quickly.

"No, Malcolm, Miguel is not a Starfleet Medical hack," he says proudly. "He graduated with honors from UT Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas. It's been consistently ranked among the world's top ten med schools for the past hundred years or so, but he’s not a plastic surgeon, so I didn’t go to him."

I nod. "That's reassuring." I hesitate, then offer, "If you like, I could get you the contact details on my man." I'm not sure why I do it. It only seems polite, not that I cared much about manners before. I didn't have to.

The Gorn's booby-trap had left me with scars to rival those I'd given Tucker, but I was fortunate, in very short order, to connect with a very gifted plastic surgeon who had some very ugly secrets to hide. I ensured he wouldn't kill me when he had me helplessly unconscious under his scalpel by injecting him with a slow-acting poison. It left him plenty of time to complete the surgery, but not enough to identify the poison and acquire the antidote. When I awoke from my surgery, along with a strong admonishment to be available 'for further consultation' in case I wasn’t happy with the results of his work, I gave him the location of the antidote and the password to access it.

"Of course, I can't say that telling him how you got his name would make him very enthusiastic about taking you on as a patient," I warn him as an afterthought, with an evil grin. “But it might make him a bit worried about what might happen if he refused.”

Tucker gives me a speculative look, like he's trying to determine whether I'm taunting him or being sincere. I'm not taunting him, but I'm not sure I'm what one would consider sincere, either. I’m trying to behave in a way that would be considered 'appropriate' under the circumstances because it seems to be what Tucker wants from me and, until I know what he's up to, I’m safest if I do what I can to appease him.

Finally, he tries a smile. "Yeah, I'd appreciate that," he says, "though the longer I wait, the less it matters. Most of the people who matter to me don't care how I look, and most of the people who care how I look don't matter to me, 'cept for the Empress and my mama. Hoshi's main concern seems to be not liking to look at ugly people."

I snort. He laughs with me. We share a look, but do not otherwise acknowledge the tenuous connection.

"Mama doesn't like it 'cause it reminds her I've been hurt."

"I'm sorry." It's out of my mouth almost before it's through my brain.

Tucker turns to look me directly in the eye then. His expression is one of genuine, if mild, interest.

"Really?" There's no challenge in his tone. He just wants an honest answer.

I have to think about it. What was my intent when I rigged that bypass? Ah, yes, to prove Martin Roberts guilty of treason... and to kill then-Commander Tucker. Why? Because I hated him. That was enough, wasn't it?

"Really," I reply. My voice is low; it’s not easy to get the words out, but they need to be said. "I am sorry. I never meant to hurt your mother."

"Yet you thought killing me wouldn't have hurt her?" He’s incredulous. I wonder briefly how he'll take what I say next, but what the hell does he think it takes to open fire on enemies of the Empire? He thinks you can pause with your finger on the trigger and worry whether the bastard in your sights has a poor grey-haired old mother who’ll cry her eyes out over the coffin?

"To be perfectly honest, Commodore, it would simply never have occurred to me that you might have a mother who was still alive and cared about you," I explain tersely. "And to be even more brutally honest, if by any unlikely chance it _had_ occurred to me, it wouldn’t have affected my judgement in the slightest. In case you haven't noticed, Starfleet is seldom a career choice for happy, well-adjusted individuals."

He actually laughs aloud at that. It wasn't meant to be funny, but I understand how it must have sounded to him. 

When he sobers, he catches my gaze again and says, "Some of us don't get a choice, General." 

He extends his right hand toward me and says, "Apology accepted, Malcolm. You're forgiven."

I feel something strange in my chest, and I know it has nothing to do with the device he's implanted there. Again, because it seems to be the 'appropriate' thing to do, I reach toward him, and we shake on it. As he grasps my hand, he turns it, studying the scars from the surgeries to repair the fingers he destroyed. Considering the nature of my job, the requirements to fire weapons and sometimes disarm them, the damage could have ended my career.

"I'm sorry about that," he says, and in the midst of the turmoil I feel at having such a valued part of me actually _held,_ now it's my turn to wonder. But he doesn't make me ask if he means it, instead going on of his own accord, "At the time, I was thinkin' about the four hours I'd spent in the Agony Booth. I wanted you to feel every minute of them just as keenly as I had. I meant to hurt you, and I meant to do a real good job of it. Actually, if we’re both bein’ honest, I meant to stomp you to death."

Such a bald statement is chilling, even to me, especially coming from someone who has it in his power to strike me down at the touch of a button, and especially when that person, having ample reason to do so, _hasn’t_. While I’m no stranger to having such sentiments, I rarely speak them aloud. My preference is usually to couch them in sarcasm and cruel humour or cleverly-worded, thinly-veiled threats. 

Our little war could go on forever, or at least until one of us succeeds in killing the other. But Tucker seems willing enough to end it, or at least call a temporary cease fire. While I can't speculate on his reasons, I can at least meet him part way, if only because it will allow me more time to recover from my recent ordeal.

"I'd say we're even, now," I tell him a little awkwardly as he releases me. "I accept your apology."

"I don't know about even..." He looks down at his coffee cup with a frown.

"We could play tit-for-tat forever," I interrupt. "Is that what you want?"

His gaze meets mine squarely. "No, but after the last year..."

"You were in no position to refuse...them." I find myself incapable of saying their names right now. I’m not even capable of holding his eyes while I think of what I endured since the day I came to Jupiter Station, and by whose command it was done to me. "I'm a lot of things and not many of them nice, but I’m not a fool; it didn’t matter a rat’s arse whether you agreed with it or not. You had to co-operate. I realize that. And while you may have robbed me of the opportunity for revenge, I can't deny that I owe you my life.” I swallow huskily, and the unavoidable admission comes out slowly and reluctantly. “I...I'm grateful."

He nods slowly. "In that case, you're welcome. And Malcolm, you should know, my friends call me Trip."

"I do know that, Commodore Tucker, but we're not there yet."

When he looks surprised and rather hurt, I tap my chest and gesture toward his left wrist where he wears the controller that can make my heart stop.

I’ll give him credit, he doesn’t come out with any bullshit. He just nods slowly. “You’re right, Malcolm. I guess it’ll take the both of us a little longer."

* * *

**Chapter Fifty-Five**

**The Logic of Amelioration**

_Commodore Charles Tucker III_

Sometimes I wonder if trying to change myself as well as a whole lot of other things was really the best idea I ever had.

Today is one of those days.

I’ve been so busy for most of it that I haven’t even noticed time passing. It was really late by the time I signed off and grabbed something to eat – Chef made loud disapproving noises about how difficult it is to keep pasta warm without it setting like concrete – and then dashed to my quarters for a shower and change.

T’Pol doesn’t exactly make loud disapproving noises, but I get the Eyebrow Lift as I walk in the door, and lately that’s more effective than any amount of loud disapproving noises.

“You are overworking,” she says as I strip off to get into the cubicle, chucking my dirty uniform towards the laundry chute. “You will endanger your health.”

“Ah, I’ll manage.” I duck my head under the shower and groan with pleasure as the spray starts to run down my back. I’ve been in some fairly mucky parts of the station today and in those confined spaces it gets hot. Being the head honcho I don’t feel that comfortable anymore stripping off to my waist like I let the guys who work there all day do, and as a result I have to put up with feeling the sweat start to run down my spine. “I’ll catch an early night. Got to get away to the Bunker first thing.”

“You were there only two days ago,” she remarks. “Is everything going smoothly?”

“Well. Considerin’. I won’t say I’m particularly lookin’ forward to tomorrow.”

The silence is clearly interrogative, so I fill her in on the details. “Reed’s havin’ his surgery tomorrow. He refuses point-blank to have a general anesthetic, an’ Miguel wants the op done as soon as possible, so he’s goin’ to have it under a spinal block.”

The silence asks why this is anything to do with me.

I pause in rubbing shampoo into my hair, and sigh. I know exactly how this is going to sound. “He refused to have it done unless I was there.”

A pair of brown eyes looks disapprovingly in at me through the Plexiglas. “General Reed is basically your prisoner.”

Well, yeah. I suppose she has a point. Trouble is, I don’t want him to _feel_ like a prisoner, however much he effectively _is_ one – apart from the necessary steps I’ve had to take to make damn sure that if he ever gets loose, the danger he presents will be limited and, if necessary, ended.

“Of course he is, _effectively_ ,” I tell her patiently, starting on with the shampoo again. “But if I keep rubbin’ his face in that fact, that’s what he’ll stay for good an’ all, physically _an’_ mentally. What I’m tryin’ to do is give him as many choices as I can, to give him a bit of his dignity back.”

Vulcans, if anyone, should understand the value of a person’s dignity. Probably if we weren’t talking about General Chaos she’d stop frowning at me.

“So you are allowing him to subject you to an experience you will find stressful and extremely unpleasant in order to bolster his dignity.”

“Well, that’s some of it.” The shower gel is running low, and when I push the dispenser button again and nothing comes out she opens the door and passes me in some more. “Truth is, at least some of it’s revenge.”

This was never going to go down well. If voices had temperatures, when she speaks again hers could practically give me frostbite.

“Revenge against you – after you saved him from certain death?”

“After I took him down in the first place, T'Pol. I handed him over to them. I think I owe him for that.”

“You had no possible choice to do anything else!”

She’s right, of course, though the vehemence with which she practically shouts this at me is pretty startling and most definitely un-Vulcan. I didn’t. But I had the choice not to kick him when he was lying paralyzed and helpless on the floor; I had the choice not to laugh down at him when he was being carried away to be raped and impregnated. I might not have known exactly what was going to happen to him but I knew it wasn’t going to be good, and I still laughed.

So yeah. I owe him. And maybe an hour or so of swallowing my gorge – or not managing to, as long as I have a barf bag and manage to turn aside in time to use it – may go some way towards making my peace with him over some of that.

Trouble is, I’m not sure how to go about explaining that to T'Pol in terms she can understand. I know that after what Reed did to her aboard _Enterprise_ she sure as hell doesn’t have any reason to think kindly of him, but I want her on board with what I’m doing here.

And isn't that just a sign of the changing times? I actually _do_ care what she thinks.

I finish showering, aware that she’s stalked out of the bathroom. I wish she hadn’t, but I can’t let her disapproval deflect me from what I’ve decided to do. I have too much riding on this to let myself pull out because T'Pol doesn’t ‘get’ why I’m letting my prisoner dictate terms to me out of spite.

When I’m through I come out and find – not surprisingly – that she’s settled down on her meditation cushion. What _does_ surprise me is that instead of lighting the candle I gave her and putting it on the small table she usually uses, she’s placed a second cushion on the floor in front of her, presumably for me.

“With your permission, I believe that in the circumstances a mind-meld will be greatly beneficial,” she says, seeing me stop short. “I may be able to help you not only to prepare for what will undoubtedly be an unpleasant experience, but to find it less traumatic when it is actually happening.”

Well, that’s a nice idea on her part, and I say so. But it kind of neutralizes some of the whole concept. I’m guessing – and if I’m right, I can understand why he feels that way – that Malcolm feels I owe him some kind of debt of _suffering_ , to make up for the abomination against him. Ok, I didn’t perform it personally, but I facilitated it. So he feels, well, I have to go through something I find traumatic, if you’re genuinely sorry you’ll step up to the plate and endure something too.

I try to explain this to T'Pol. Turns out that either the concept doesn’t translate too well into Vulcan thinking or she just doesn’t see why the general can’t accept his surgery and all its associated trauma as payback for the evil he’s already perpetrated against others.

“This is _personal_ , T'Pol.” I sit on the cushion opposite her and try to clarify the situation. “Fact is, I think the only chance I have at all to get through to him is to _make_ it personal between the two of us. If it’s my rank versus his rank I’ve already lost – General Reed’s way past bein’ talked to.

“So if it ever gets to the point when you’re in the room with the two of us, you won’t hear me call him by his title, however far he outranks me. I call him Malcolm. Actually, usually I call him ‘Mal’. Not sure he likes that too much, but he just has to put up with it.” I grin at the memory of the glare. “He hasn’t called me ‘Trip’ yet, but I’m workin’ on it.”

The puzzled frown is still sunk between her brows. “So you feel that your willingness to witness his surgery may induce him to regard your debt to him as paid?”

“Paid? No way. Maybe a down-payment on the interest.” I chuckle, but then look at her soberly. “I may be kiddin’ myself, T'Pol, but I’ll tell you somethin’ honestly.

“Yeah. I think a whole lot of him wants me to be there because he knows I’m squeamish. He’s a vindictive little son of a bitch an' he wants me to suffer because I made him suffer. If he wasn’t so powerless right now he’d probably make me suffer a hell of a lot more, but right now this is the end of his chain an’ he’s goin’ to it.

“But the truth is, I think right deep down there’s somethin’ else goin’ on. I think he wants to have someone there he knows, someone he can put some tiny bit of trust in if he can find any. Maybe just someone to keep him company while he’s helpless and scared shitless.”

“Lieutenant Cutler will be present, surely.”

“I’m sure she will. But she’ll be assistin’ with the procedure, an’ that means her attention will be on what’s goin’ on with the surgery. I’m sure that a part of her will very much be aware of every breath he’s drawin’, but she can’t let that distract her for a second from her professional duties. So that’s goin’ to feel kind of an impersonal kindness.”

“In short–” she draws the inevitable conclusion – “General Reed wants someone to hold his hand.”

The image is so hilarious I shout with laughter, loving the way her eyes are twinkling. “I don’t think that’s _exactly_ what he wants, sweetheart. An’ if he by any chance did, I doubt it’d be my hand he’d want to hold!”

“But you intend to proceed with this regardless.”

I take her hand. “I have to, T'Pol. It may not make any sense to you, but just take it that – I owe him. An’ for my sake as much as his, I have to do this.”

She looks hard at me, and for a minute I think she’s going to argue again. But then she sighs; I suppose she’s had more than enough experience of my stubbornness when I’ve gotten my heels dug in.

“Then if you persist in this, I recommend that I perform a meld to prepare you for it.”

“What?”

“You are squeamish,” she says calmly. “You have neither the training nor the temperament to look on unmoved while a surgeon cuts open a living body and removes an organ from it.”

I’d like to argue, but I’ve already admitted as much and quite frankly just the description makes my gorge rise. I swallow, with difficulty. “I’m not denyin’ that, but you’re still missin’ the point. If it was _easy_ it wouldn’t be _worth_ anythin’.”

“And the point _you_ are missing is how disruptive it is likely to be to the team performing the surgery if you either vomit all over the patient – which seems likely – or lose consciousness and fall to the floor, possibly injuring yourself and adding to their workload.”

I open my mouth to say I wouldn’t do either of those things, and shut it again, imagining what Miguel’s reaction would likely be if his open surgery site was suddenly drenched in puke. And whatever he’d be likely to come out with is zip, zilch and totally _nada_ compared to what Mal would; that guy can bitch for England if he’s pissed off. “Maybe,” I say weakly.

“I may not fully perceive the value of your discomfort,” she continues, “but I perceive that you are determined to endure it. Therefore I suggest that you allow me to place a block on your natural urge to regurgitate food in highly stressful conditions, and to insert a command in your hypothalamus to respond to any rise in cortisol levels by stimulating your brain to produce the appropriate volume and type of endorphins.”

Miguel’s the doc, not me. I give her the blank stare.

“You would have no instinct to vomit, and you would find the stress bearable,” she says in a long-suffering voice. “Not pleasant, but bearable.”

Well. That wasn’t exactly what I signed up for, but then I don’t want to be getting the hairy eyeball from Miguel, Liz _and_ Malcolm for the rest of my natural. And I’ve a nasty feeling that if I want to get through this without it I’d better swallow my pride and take any help I can get.

“Not pleasant,” I stipulate. 

Do Vulcans stifle a sigh? ‘Cause I swear she just did. “Not pleasant.”

Okay. Maybe I’m a little bit relieved to be given some help to get through this. Give me a broken engine and I’ll wade through it without a second’s hesitation, but a broken body … especially when I have to talk to its owner, who’ll presumably need me – whether he’ll admit it even to himself or not – to be there for him. Because although I suppose he won’t see anything and I know he won’t feel anything, he’ll be absolutely aware that someone has their hands in his guts and there’s not a damn thing he can do to defend himself.

I rub my fingers through my hair and try to relax. “Right. I’ll go with that. Thanks.”

She nods. I guess she’s just relieved I actually have some sense, however hard she had to dig to reach it.

Her fingertips on my psi points are gentle, already familiar. I find myself relaxing. “My mind to your mind… My thoughts to your thoughts….”

The white space opens around us.

I don’t see her immediately, and I turn around. She’s wearing this long, loose white robe thing, and even as our eyes meet it slips from her shoulders.

“Hey, wait a minute….!”

“It will help to create positive feelings regarding the situation,” she says evenly. Though considering she’s not wearing a damn thing and looks unbelievably beautiful, ‘positive feelings’ aren’t quite the right description for what I’m feeling right now. And damnation if I want to start feeling _this_ when I’m standing by the bio-bed tomorrow; I’d never be able to control my reaction, and one glance to his right and Malcolm Reed would leap off the bed and run for his goddamn life, spinal block or no spinal block.

“My body to your body.” 

I’m not sure who said that.

And quite frankly, I don’t give a damn.


	12. 56-60

**Chapter Fifty-Six**

**Procedure**

_Commodore Charles Tucker III_

When I finally – after a few seconds outside the door, just to get my nerve up – walk into the anteroom of the makeshift operating theatre in the Bunker, I can’t describe how thankful I am that T’Pol made that suggestion about giving me this mental blocker to help me get through the next hour or so.

Miguel sent me some info on what the procedure will involve. To some extent, he’ll have to improvise his techniques, because not only the womb but all the rest of the implanted stuff will have to go too. It’s a big, complicated operation and a lot could go wrong, but Mal is adamant that he wants every last bit of the foreign components removed. I suppose I can understand that; his whole sexual identity must have been compromised by finding he’d basically been made into a hermaphrodite.

It’s probably not surprising that I’ve beaten him to it. I can’t imagine he’ll be in that much of a hurry to do this, for all that he’ll undoubtedly be glad when it’s done. Miguel is in the far room, prepping for surgery; presumably everything in theatre is set up and ready to go, because Liz is fiddling with the stuff that will be required for anesthesia, and by the way she looked up when I came in she thought Malcolm had arrived.

“Sorry, baby girl. Just me.” I need to let her know I’m not offended by the way the smile wavers on her face. “I’m sure he’ll be along any minute.”

She puts down the hypospray without answering, points me to a set of surgical scrubs waiting on a table, and begins tidying the contents of an already tidy surgical tray. The biggest thing on this is a needle, and even the sight of that makes me a bit queasy. I know what it’s for, of course, since she's given me a few pointers beforehand; even modern technology hasn’t produced a hypospray accurate enough to deliver a dose directly into the space needed for this particular procedure.

“Are you okay?” When my hands have been disinfected and I’ve finished getting my gown and stuff on she still hasn’t spoken, so I touch the side of her wrist gently with the back of one gloved knuckle. 

The way she jerks her hand away from mine answers me before she does.

“Not really.” She doesn’t look up, but her nervous non-busyness stops. “Commodore, I–.”

‘Commodore’. Not ‘Trip’. Now, that could mean that she’s extra worried about the surgery, or that she’s got a bone to pick with me. Or come to think of it, it could mean any one of half a dozen other things, because if there’s a man breathing who understands what a woman is likely to mean in any given situation, _I_ sure as hell haven’t met him.

“Spit it out, Lieutenant.” At least I know it has nothing to do with that business about what happened to the baby. She's already said she's forgiven me for that, even if I still can't quite get my head around her having to 'own the action' in order to 'process the emotions.'

I'm glad she has Ginny helping her with that now, though I'm not entirely sure psychology isn't just complicating a fairly simple, if terrible, thing in this case. Whatever Ginny has taught Liz to call it, it sounds to me like she just feels the need to take responsibility for her actions in that situation. I'm actually pretty proud of her for that. I was ready and willing to take the blame for Miguel's benefit, but she wasn't having it. It shows how much she's grown in the last few years that she wouldn't let me protect her from the possible consequences.

“I – I wish you’d stop calling me that. That ‘baby girl’ thing.”

For a moment I honestly don’t get what she means. Then I remember that it was what I used to call her when we were all living in fear of the Triad and their spy network, and when the only safe way for us to whisper together was for the two of us to share a bed.

My first instinct is to take offense. Because despite the reasons why we did what we did – and they were damn hard, practical reasons, that probably kept both of us alive – I did my damnedest to make sure I wasn’t the only one to get something out of it.

Yeah, I’ve changed some since then. I’m not sure I could do that anymore, at least not with quite the same cheerful thoughtlessness. But it wasn’t like I treated her like a few other women around the station I could name, who in my early days here got the ‘privilege’ of sharing my bed but not that of playacting instead of delivering the real deal.

Then I notice the nervous way she’s glancing up at me, and I have the grace to be ashamed; she may have been playacting, but she was doing it because she had to, mostly in the effort to save the man she loves. It can’t have been easy for her – I can guess the word went around that from being Reed’s bitch she’d made the move to being Tucker’s, probably because nobody normal or good-looking would give her a second glance. So given the snide remarks and sniggers she undoubtedly got, it’s probably completely understandable that she doesn’t care to be reminded of it. Nobody would dare comment in my hearing that I sure must be desperate if I was reduced to scavenging the major’s leavings, but I’m as sure as I can be that was said, too, and probably in her hearing.

“I’m sorry, Liz,” I say contritely. “Old habit … I’ll try not to use it again.”

The relief in her face is enough of a reward for my change of tack. But before she can say anything, the door hisses open again and Malcolm walks in. He’s wearing only shorts and a sleeveless top, but he strips off the top and throws it into a corner.

He’s always been a bit pale-skinned, but now his face is the color of new milk; and his lean frame, formerly well-muscled, is still so thin, if anyone didn't know better they'd think he was just starting his recovery after a long illness. While he's gained back enough stamina to be able to walk unassisted anywhere within the parameters I've set for him inside the bunker, anyone who knew him _before_ would realize he doesn't move as briskly, finds a seat more quickly when he reaches his destination, and stays in it longer once he's settled. And he’s so visibly tense that he even _moves_ awkwardly; he did that to begin with, of course, when he practically had to learn how to walk again, but lately he’s started to regain a lot of his ease of movement. Now, however, he looks like every muscle in his body is so stiff his joints will hardly work.

His head turns. His gaze fixes on the bio-bed he’s going to have to lie down on and be immobilized on, and he stops dead, like he’s run into a brick wall.

I see the muscles in his throat move as he swallows, and I’m guessing that for all he’s agreed to go through with this, now he’s actually confronting it it’s all he can do not to turn and run.

“Let Miguel know he’s here,” I say softly to Liz, and give her a little nod to tell her _I’ll handle this._

It probably hurts her like hell to turn away when she can see he’s in a bad way like this, but she trusts me. She walks away through the operating theatre doors, and I cross the few paces to Malcolm. “Hey. Mal.” I keep my voice very quiet. “You’re gonna be okay. You’ll get through this.”

His arm under my hand is absolutely rigid. “You don’t understand.”

I’m about to say I do, but of course I don’t – in the least. I haven’t the faintest damned idea of what it’s actually like to be strapped helpless on a bio-bed for months on end, at the mercy of whatever anybody, anybody _at all_ , wants to do to me.

“No, I don’t. But for what it’s worth, I’m going to be standin’ beside you.” I draw a deep breath. “I know you still probably have real issues trustin’ people, because that’s the way you’ve been for most of your life. But Miguel reckons even when you’re dosed up you’ll be able to fire straight enough to hit me.”

And on that, I take a small disruptor pistol out of my pocket and hand it to him.

It’s fully charged, and for all its small size it’s a fully working, albeit a low-powered, weapon. It packs enough of a punch to stop an angry Klingon in his tracks, and could still cause fatal damage with multiple direct hits. He’ll know that perfectly well. 

I watch him go to check the power cell, quite automatically, and stop himself. He looks at the bio-bed again, and swallows a second time. Then, to my absolute amazement, he passes back the pistol, with a hand that isn’t quite as steady as he’d probably like it to be. “I realize it's been a while since I … since I've gone 'out of it’,” he says huskily. “But I imagine what's going to happen today would be as likely as anything to trigger it." Gesturing to my wristband and his chest, he also adds drily, "And I certainly don't want to share your fate via our electronic connection should I decide to take any of my anxiety or frustration out on you."

Feeling my eyes go wide in shock, I say, "Shit, Mal! I honestly forgot all about that. I just wanted to make you feel a little more secure in there."

I expect him to rail at me, to be furious, to accuse me of trying to manipulate him into somehow hurting himself, but he just looks at me with mild contempt, and says, "Well, you're a bloody fool for wanting to do it this way, Commodore! Do you think if I believed that I had one chance in a million of getting out of here that you'd still be standing there looking like an idiot?" 

I feel my face get hot with embarrassment, but there's no way I can argue with him.

Then he gives me that little, snarling smirk he sometimes uses, though somehow it's a little more humorous than usual, and says, "Besides, I hesitate to imagine what might become of my insides if I were to shoot you while your brother-in-law is messing about with them."

"Honestly, Malcolm," I try to reassure him. "I really only did want you to have the confidence of knowing you could stop the procedure at any time."

After a thoughtful look, he says, "Actually, I believe you, but unless I killed you – which would consequently kill me – I'd still be at your mercy when you recovered, wouldn't I?" And he just shakes his head and says, "Like I said, you're a bloody fool."

He looks at the biobed once again and says, in a strangely small voice, "It’s not the surgery, Commodore, it’s–”

“It’s havin’ to trust _anybody_ as much as you are now, after what happened to you last time.” I step into his eye line, blocking his view of the bed, and wait for him to look at me, and even though I know he really has nothing to fear from any of us I can’t control the visceral stab of pity at the raw terror in his eyes. “Mal, I can’t imagine how much courage it’s taken you to come here. I can’t even begin to imagine what it’ll cost you to lie down on that bed and let medical professionals take control of you again. But these are good people and they are gonna _put right_ what those other bastards did to you.

“Yeah, it’s gonna be terrifyin’ for you.” Taking a bit of a risk, I put my hands on his shoulders. “But whatever else you’ve been called, no-one ever called you a coward. So you can do this. I _know_ you can.”

“Fear is a _reaction_ , courage is a _decision,_ ” he whispers, and it sounds like he’s quoting somebody, reminding himself of something he already knows. Then he grips my wrists, quite gently, and releases himself. It's the first time in all the years I've known him that he's ever knowingly reached out to me without the intention to hurt, and I don't know quite what to make of it.

He walks. I’ll never know how, but he walks, unsupported, alone, and reaches the bed. I’m close behind him, but I have no idea if he even knows that or whether he’s too deep in his own battle to know anything else. 

I’m guessing that if he allowed himself one second to stop and think he’d never go through with this. So with one movement he rolls onto the bio-bed and lies down, staring at the ceiling, as stiff as a marble figure on a tomb.

Liz must have been watching, probably via a surveillance feed. The moment he’s settled, she comes back in.

With a soft word of reassurance, she starts checking his vital signs. At what she finds, her lips purse with worry. She looks at him, then at me, and then back at him again. I can see her visibly gathering her nerve to tell him something he’s not going to like. “Malcolm, I’m afraid I’m going to have to sedate you.”

“What?” His head snaps sideways to bring his petrifying glare to bear on her. “I thought I’d only have to have that … that thing done in my back?”

“The spinal block. Yes. That’s more than sufficient for pain relief. But your blood pressure and your heart and respiration rates are too high to risk an operation. There would be too much blood loss, too much risk of you going into shock.

“We have to get them down somehow or call off the procedure.”

I suppose in the state he is, it’s a miracle he doesn’t explode off the table and throw something. As it is, he gives out some ungentlemanly language, but aimed more at the ceiling and Fate in general rather than at Liz, who after all is only the messenger.

“You wouldn’t have to put him out completely, though?” I press, leaving him to get on with the hissy fit while I try to find some positives.

“Oh no, no,” she replies gratefully. “I’d just give him something to make him a bit drowsy, that’s all. Just to take the edge off.”

“You hear that, Mal? You don’t have to be put to sleep. They just need to relax you a bit. ‘Cause if my heart’s gallopin’ I’m damn sure yours is, an’ we don’t want to take any more risks than we have to.”

He darts a murderous glance at me and snarls that the only one ‘taking the risks’ is him. But he’s a realist, and I’ll guess that he’s already summed up the situation and is just venting a little before accepting the inevitable.

“You know Liz won’t do a damned thing to you that she doesn’t have to,” I tell him quietly. He may have to submit to something that’s going to scare him even more, but it won’t hurt to help him salvage a little pride by acting like he really does have a choice. “If anyone’s on your side, Mal, it’s her. Just let her do her job an’ keep you safe durin' this.”

He grumbles a bit more, mostly for effect while he comes to terms with it, and then growls, “Oh, get on with it then, if you must!”

“Always the gracious Englishman,” I remark, mostly to draw his fire in my direction while Liz hurriedly gets together what she needs.

The hiss of the hypospray at his neck interrupts his indrawn breath just after he’s gotten it back. Luckily for me, because I don’t think what he was aiming to reply would have been all that gracious either. His eyes roll as the drug hits him, but they don’t shut, they just go a bit vague and sleepy-looking, and his mumbled ‘Oh, fuck off’ doesn’t really have any force behind it.

“Readings coming back to within safe parameters,” she says, looking at the readouts.

“I’m going to get you ready for the surgery now, Malcolm.” Her voice is steady even if her eyes aren’t. “You’ll have to roll over onto your left side so I can administer the anesthetic. I’m sorry. We’ll help you if you can’t manage.”

He manages a nod, and pushes himself over without help. He’s now facing me, and I put my left hand flat beside his right, where it’s now gripping the edge of the bed. He doesn’t respond, or acknowledge my presence in any way, simply lies there staring unseeingly into – well, whatever you do stare into when your waking life turns into the scenario of your nightmares. I can only hope that now he’s packed full of sedative, it’ll be a bit less real to him than it would have been otherwise.

Neither of us says anything while Liz does whatever needs to be done. She uses a second hypospray to administer the local anesthetic so then of course he doesn’t feel anything when the needle is inserted, with the aid of a scanner to make sure it’s going exactly where it needs to, into what she calls the ‘subarachnoid space’. I watch the little frown of concentration between her brows – it helps to keep my mind off exactly what she’s doing.

Apparently the first sign of the anesthesia taking effect is a warm feeling in the feet. After a couple of minutes Mal reports that he can feel this. After another few minutes, a look of growing panic steals over his face and he starts urgently feeling at his hips and belly like he thinks someone might have stolen them when he wasn’t looking. “I can’t–!”

“It’s entirely normal, Malcolm. You’ll have no feeling at all anywhere in your lower body until the anesthetic wears off. In the meantime, we have this going to keep feeding in very small amounts to make sure it doesn’t till we want it to.” She shows him a pump, attached to a fine catheter that presumably leads into this space in his spine, and then competently inserts a drip into his upper arm via a cannula.

“This is just a precaution. In a few cases, anesthesia can cause a drop in blood pressure. We have this set up so we can administer the right drugs to counteract it if that happens. But not, of course, unless it does.” She checks the valve, which is safely closed up, and then glances at the monitors again. “Well, everything looks fine. If Miguel’s ready, I guess we may as well get started.

“If you’re sure you want to go through with this?”

Well. I’m guessing it’d need the contents of your average drugstore to make him _want_ to go through with it, even if he is currently halfway to La-La Land. But he manages a bitter little chuckle, and nods. “I want to … be human again.”

=/\= 

I concentrate on those words as I push the trolley into the operating theatre – yet again, it helps to have something else to think about other than what’s going to happen in the next few minutes. Miguel is ready and waiting, and Liz fills him in on what she’s done while between us we get Mal transferred onto the operating table and attach him to the various machines that are going to keep track of his responses throughout. Then she pulls the screen into place, its lower folds resting across the patient’s chest to block out his view of what’s happening beyond it.

There’s a stool put ready by the head of the bed and I park my butt on it. Neither Mal nor I can see either of the other two from here (though I probably could see the top half of them if I sat up straight), but there are faint rustling sounds as protective cloths are positioned around the surgery site. He’s lying perfectly still – well, he hasn’t much option now, you can’t really use your legs if you can’t feel them – and staring at the ceiling. We’ve already been warned that if you look up at the large overhead light you can see stuff reflected in the surface of it, so I’m going to make sure that wherever I look it’s not going to be at that. T'Pol’s magic mental trickery’s doing a good job so far, but I don’t want to push the angle.

“I’m proud of you, Mal,” I tell him softly. “You’ve done the hard bit. This is the easy bit. Just lie back there an’ think of England.”

I surprise a bit of a chuckle out of him, though I don’t suppose he really feels much like laughing.

“We’re about to start the surgery,” Miguel’s voice comes from behind the screen. “Please just do your best to relax, General. Ah’m not expectin’ any complications, just a nice quick couple of nicks an’ you’ll be back to normal.”

Well. Even I know there’s probably a heck of a lot more than ‘a quick couple of nicks’ involved, but that’s definitely not the most tactful thing to point out. Malcolm just nods, and I tell my brother-in-law to get on with the job. It’s on the tip of my tongue to joke about not leaving any medical equipment in there when he closes up, but luckily I think better of that as well. I just pat Mal reassuringly on the shoulder.

“You really can’t feel anythin’? Anythin’ at all?” I ask, keeping my voice down.

“Not a thing.” Something that might be the ghost of a smirk passes across his mouth. “They could be doing anything to me behind there.”

“They’re doin’ exactly what they promised they would.” The words _I want to be human again_ haven’t quite left my mind, and I wonder if this is the time or the place to ask him what he meant by them. Sure, he was surgically and hormonally altered to perform the function of a woman for a while, but as much of a horror as that must have been for him, performed without his consent and completely against his will, it didn’t make him other than human. Just about there it occurs to me to wonder whether he’s talking about ‘being human’ in the physical sense, or is making some reference about this being a step towards rehabilitation. But that’s a hell of an assumption to make with regard to a guy like General Malcolm Reed, the terror of the Empire, and it will take a lot more than six words to make me sure of it.

His hands are lightly linked on his chest. At a guess, he’s having to exert some self-control from trying to lift the screen and check what’s going on for himself, though he could always just look up at the reflective surface of the overhead light and I don’t think he has so far. He definitely can’t be squeamish, but then maybe it’s different when it’s your own body cut open with all its organs on display.

That thought makes me swallow hard and take a deep breath.

I should be giving him something else to think about other than what’s being done to him down there. I open my mouth to ask him how his physiotherapy’s coming along, but before I can start, Miguel’s voice comes from behind the green curtain.

"You know, Trip, Ah've often wondered over the past few months, so now, Ah'm just gonna ask, what the _hell_ was wrong with your Doctor Phlox?"

I grimace, and give Mal’s shoulder a reassuring squeeze; he probably doesn’t think about Phlox any more than he absolutely has to, so I’ll keep this as short as I can. "Point A, he wasn't _my_ Doctor Phlox. I'd have happily shoved him out an airlock, but I was under orders to accommodate him. I did as much as I had to, to avoid bein' punished, but no more. An' B, you're gonna have to be more specific, Miguel, because there are _way_ too many answers to that question."

The doc chuckles slightly. Not having known Phlox or ever been in the service, he doesn't realize that I’m not being flippant, and probably not even exaggerating about the airlock. If ever anyone deserved to be spaced without a second thought, it was that slimy Denobulan bastard.

"Well, from what Ah can tell, the man was an exceptional chemist and pharmacologist, a gifted surgeon, and understood human endocrinology better than any specialist Ah’ve ever known."

Then the conversation stops for a bit as he has to concentrate on what he's doing. I’m glad of that for Mal’s sake, as his mouth has tightened noticeably while Miguel was singing Phlox’s praises, though he didn’t say anything.

"Tie that off right there, Ms. Elizabeth....Thank you, and now some suction…Good."

Presumably Miguel’s back to doing a part of the job that allows him to get back to conversation, so he resumes. "Ah don't mind telling you, Ah think the man was a medical genius. He'd have to be, in order to adjust a human male's hormones to let him carry a pregnancy, manage the anti-rejection protocol to keep the body from rejecting the necessary transplant, _and_ balance all that with the intravenous drugs and nutrition Liz says the general here was getting."

Mal is definitely getting pissed off now. “You wouldn’t admire the warped little fucker half so much if _you’d_ ever been the one on his operating table,” he breathes.

"Well, nobody ever said he wasn't smart," I reply sharply. I’ll be honest, I’m getting a little irritated myself; it’s not like Miguel not to realize how this anthem of praise is going to sound to the victim. I take a wary peek over the screen, just enough so I can give him a warning scowl if he happens to look up. "It just so happens that he was also a complete asshole."

But brother-in-law is apparently so intent on his job that his fascination with the mindset of the guy who perpetrated it in the first place absorbs him. For the moment, at least, he seems to have no thought of it beyond the mere science; either that, or he’s deliberately trying to provide Mal with a distraction to keep his mind off what’s happening to him. "Even so, and even given the general was an unwilling participant, there were a number of bad medical practices used on him, from the severe restriction of movement leading to atrophy to the long-term, unnecessary use of IV nutrition, which is hard on the blood vessels and could have impacted his digestive tract far more than it did. Ah just don't understand why your… 'scuse me … _the_ late Doctor Phlox would make an already risky procedure that much more dangerous with unnecessarily Draconian treatments."

At this point Mal, obviously annoyed by having to lie still and listen to his surgeon praise the guy who put him here, and probably frustrated with being discussed in the third person, gives an agonized groan and snarls, "He was a monster! What the hell does it matter why he didn’t adhere strictly to the best medical praxis? I hardly think Hippocrates would have recognized ninety percent of what he carried out!"

"Retract that just a little more, please? ... Perfect, and hold the basin over here."

There's a wet _plop_ , and my stomach goes _flop._ I have to swallow hard a couple times and there's a bitter taste in the back of my throat now, but I'm not blowing chunks, so I call it a win.

"Done." Miguel raises his voice again from its confidential murmur to Liz, silently assisting him.

I’ve never seen him at work before, and keeping the screen carefully between me and what he’s actually doing, I take a minute to admire his calm confidence and economy of movement. I’m pleased by how well I’m holding up, too – ordinarily I wouldn’t even have the guts to look over the top of the screen, but now, even though I can smell the blood, it doesn’t faze me; T’Pol’s mind-blocker is still working. I’d still like to catch his eye and warn him off of this particular avenue of conversation, but he doesn’t look up.

"Well, even a monster doesn't want his hard work to go to waste, particularly when so much is riding on success. Ah just don’t understand why a guy with his skills would have utterly no regard for basic standards of care, General. You don't need me to go into detail about what they did to you, but the real puzzler for me is, why, after all the trouble he took to force your compliance, did he use such an obviously deformed organ for transplantation? Surely, given who he was working for, Phlox would have had access to any number of healthy young women with perfect organs, but he's used one that is patently defective! Only about three percent of human females have a uterine deformity, but bicornuate is far and away the most common abnormality. Surely he would have known this was not normal."

He’s obviously done with the extraction part of things, now presumably he has to close the surgical wounds. He nods in the direction of the basin and says, "Liz, you can take that to medical waste disposal."

"Wait!" Mal snaps as she turns towards the door. "I want to see it."

She stops, and glances down at the bowl in her hands.

"Malcolm, no," she says compassionately. "There's no need for you to look at this."

"I have to see it. I _have_ to know that it's out of me. I _have_ to be sure it's gone." For a moment, pitifully, he reminds me of Bert when he was a child, having to check in the closet and under the bed before crawling under the covers, just to be sure there were no monsters.

Liz looks from me to Miguel. (I’ll bet Mal doesn't miss that she looks at me first.) We both nod, so she brings it over to him – I know my limitations, so I turn my head away, getting no more than the vaguest impression of a small, bloody, vaguely heart-shaped mass in a stainless steel bowl. He looks at it for a moment, swallows audibly, and nods slowly as though a guess has been finally confirmed.

"You're confused about what kind of doctor Phlox was," he says at last, his voice hard. With an effort, he hoists himself up onto his elbows so he can see across the top of the screen to catch Miguel’s gaze. "You think there must have been a 'standard of care' in operation because he was a physician and I was his patient, but nothing could be farther from the truth. The fact is, he was a scientist – an _insane_ scientist – and I was his bloody lab rat.

“He may well have been a genius. Even I knew that he was immensely knowledgeable on any number of subjects, and believe me, he would have been selected to take charge of The Project because he was absolutely the best in the field. That didn’t stop him from being the cruellest person I’ve ever known, and coming from me, that says a hell of a lot. Not only did he not care about pain in his victims, he actually _relished_ it. 

“Without his help, I would never have been able to design the Agony Booth that every starship is fitted with. I wanted a weapon to terrorise every member of the crew into obedience, but for me, the pain was a legitimate means to an end. For him, a lot of the time, the pain _was_ the end. It was his idea of entertainment." A short, bitterly derisive snort. "No, if you want the truth, it was his bloody hobby!

“Yes, he took risks with my care. If you want my guess, it was because he wanted to make me suffer, wanted to give me the least possible chance of surviving afterwards. He safeguarded the pregnancy, yes, because it was more than his life was worth to have it discovered he’d taken any chances with it; but me – I was fair game. I wasn’t his _patient_. I was his _victim._

"And for all those who might say I deserved it, that doesn't make him any less a monster or what he did to me any less of an abomination."

It occurs to me here that this might be a big moment for Malcolm. All things being equal, nobody _ever_ did _anything_ to General Reed without his consent. He's always worked _very_ damned hard to make himself far too scary for most people to even try. For him to admit aloud to _this_ audience (well, Miguel and me, anyway, I suspect he's been a little more candid with Liz) that he was a _victim_ , that someone was _able_ to do bad things to him… Well, obviously we already know what happened to him, and that he damn well didn't consent to it happening, but actually admitting it, _talking_ about it - I doubt that would have happened without the help of the sedative Liz gave him, and I hope he doesn't regret opening up this tiny crack in his armor later; but I'm damned sure going to tell Ginny about it.

The whole room goes quiet then; for a moment, Miguel even stops working. Then he looks Malcolm in the eye and says gravely, "Ah’m sorry, General, that Ah didn’t fully understand what sort of man he must have been, or Ah’d never have spoken about him in your hearin’ – especially not praisin’ him up the way Ah did. An’ Ah’m even more sorry that you had to go through that, and Ah promise to take more care in the future to make sure you never feel that way again under my care."

Mal nods again. "That would be appreciated."

Then, for reasons I doubt even he understands – maybe because he's feeling vulnerable as he can't move from the waist down and Miguel has just finished poking around in his guts, or maybe because the sedative has loosened his tongue – he continues levelly, "I think, if you were to run some genetic tests on it, you would find it's not a deformed human organ at all, but a perfectly healthy one of the genus _canis_. Though not from any species found on Earth."

There's another dead silence, as the penny drops.

I just can’t handle it, thinking of the absolute monstrosity of what has been done to him – thinking of him _living_ for all this time, suspecting, even knowing, what had been transplanted into him. No amount of mental block can save me from the reaction. I grab a nearby medical waste container, and race into the far corner to vomit.

"Oh!" Liz gasps, and when I can finally lift my head again I see her eyes filled with tears, her free hand clasping her mouth.

"Sonofabitch," Miguel whispers. Under his tan, the color has ebbed out of his face. Now, maybe, he’ll understand what Phlox was, a whole lot better than he did before: a genius whose talent was put into the service of evil, a doctor who devoted his immense scientific abilities to perfecting the art of inflicting suffering.

Smirking, and looking calmer than he has in days, Mal just lets us all process that for a moment. He seems mildly surprised when I come back to his side in just a minute or two, wiping my mouth and wishing I had a glass of water so I could rinse out. I’m hoping that he has no real idea of the immense pity I feel for him now; more than ever I want to turn him round to my way of thinking, not just to advance my cause, but so he can know what it is to have real friends who would never dream of fucking him over.

Then he says to Liz, "Take one sample, and only one, to confirm my suspicions, and then incinerate it all, the organ and the sample, and delete the data, immediately." Shifting his glance to include me, he goes on, "Destroy any circuitry that processes or stores the data. I don’t mean scrap it, I mean shred it, burn it and then space it. I don't _ever_ want it being retrieved."

In a tone that dares anyone to defy him, he adds, " _That's an order_."

* * *

**Chapter Fifty-Seven**

**The Evening After the Morning Before**

_Lieutenant (j.g.) Elizabeth Cutler_

For all that we did everything possible to make it easy for him, major surgery is always taxing on the patient. I doubt if it was due all that much to the sedative I’d administered that Malcolm fell asleep soon afterwards, while he was being monitored to make sure that everything settled down okay, and hardly even stirred when a couple of orderlies helped us lift him into his own bed to finish his sleep. I checked on him on half-hourly and then hourly intervals, and he just went on sleeping, hardly even moving; maybe, at more than a physical level, something that poisoned his peace has finally been taken away from him.

He was right, of course. About the uterus. It belonged to some unknown species of canid. Despite a momentary feeling of regret about depriving the scientific community of an object for study, as soon as I’ve made the identification Trip arranges the disposal of the remains – biological, mechanical and electronic – in exactly the way Malcolm specified.

We don’t talk much. I can guess that the discovery of the full disgusting extent of what Phlox had done and his part in it – undoubtedly at Alpha’s express order – will take a good while for Trip to come to terms with. Perhaps it’s a mite less difficult for me to comprehend it, after I had that momentary appalling glimpse into Alpha’s true nature on the day of my promotion; a day which usually feels so long ago, until I think about it, and then I immediately taste the warm, raw, still-bleeding flesh in my mouth and smell the iron tang of blood in the air that came with the horrific vision he gave me. It’s not the kind of experience you can really share in any meaningful way, but it makes you a whole lot more open to other discoveries that otherwise would defy the imagination.

I have to admit that for all I’m probably less surprised than Trip is, it will still take a little time for me to make the necessary adjustments regarding Malcolm. The fact that all along he’s known, or suspected, or believed that the organ that had been forcibly transplanted into him wasn’t even human reveals another layer of hurt and humiliation under his fragmenting outer defenses. It’s less and less of a wonder that he’s so often erratic, aggressive, suspicious and hostile. I can only imagine what he must have been feeling this morning as he made his way to theatre and to the ultimate exposure of the terrible thing that had been done to him.

I can definitely foresee there being problems when he regains consciousness. He’ll be hyper-vigilant for the first sign of amusement, scorn or – worst of all – pity. We’ll have to be extra careful to treat him exactly the same as we did before the surgery, and there’s not much harder to do than consciously act the way you do unconsciously. As I make my way down to his room after dinner, I’m aware of apprehension; a MACO believes the old adage ‘attack is the best form of defense’ and an ultra-defensive Malcolm will most likely be about as approachable as a scorpion.

Still, he needs to be monitored regularly. In preparation for today we placed some spare equipment in his room that will come in handy. Some of it, of course, is keeping track of his vital signs even while he’s asleep, but still there’s no substitute for human expertise – and, of course, Miguel will expect to see my written report. I’ve brought a light meal for Malcolm that won’t overtax his stomach (he had no breakfast, and hasn’t eaten since, though we had him on a drip while he was in recovery), but he may not feel hungry yet. Still, it’s only crackers, cheese and grapes, with cold creamed rice and pineapple for dessert; ideally they ought to be eaten soon, with so much dairy content, but they won’t hurt standing for a while if needs be. He really ought to eat something, but if I try too hard to coax him then as sure as God made gooseberries, he’ll dig his heels in and refuse to eat anything at all.

He’s still asleep when I enter the room. I bring up the lights gradually, so if it wakens him it won’t be with a jolt, but even so the monitors above him show the long, even brain patterns of deep sleep, and they don’t change even when I quietly pull back the blanket to reveal the bandaging around his middle.

He has a surgical drain in place, and the bulb is again mostly full of bloody fluid so I empty it, making a careful note of the volume. His temperature is a little high but within acceptable parameters, and his heart rate is normal; his skin shows no sign of clamminess or sweating. Most importantly, the bandages show no sign of leakage from below, so I’ll leave them in place. The surgical adhesive should do a good job, and Miguel added a few dissolving stitches for reinforcement, but the less disturbance the better in this critical first twenty-four hours.

I’m quietly replacing the blanket when I realize that without any external sign he’s woken up. It was always a disconcerting ability he had, to be able to transition from deep sleep to complete wakefulness in the space of half a second.

The bed’s slightly tilted, so he can watch me without raising his head. Under his lashes his eyes seem perfectly lucid, but when he speaks his voice is a little slurred. “What … what time is it?”

“Just after twenty-one hundred hours,” I reply softly.

“Y’checkin’ things out … everythin’ OK?”

“Just fine. You’ll need to keep the drain and everything in for another day or so, depends on how things settle down.”

His mouth twists slightly. He knows exactly what I mean: another day of effective immobility, catheterized and bored. “’Ve got tummyache. Cramps, sort of. ‘M I supposed to have cramps?”

“You’ll probably have them for a few days, but as long as they don’t get too bad it’s nothing to worry about, just the rest of your internal organs sorting out who’s going to take over the vacant real estate.”

He grunts, reassured. “‘Nature abhors a vacuum’,” he quotes.

“I can give you a painkiller, if it’s so bad it’s stopping you sleeping.”

“Nah.” 

It’s really funny, the way the drugs he’s still got in his system are making him dopey. Normally he speaks with this crisp, correct British accent, but now he sounds almost drunk. I wonder what he’d be like if he really was drunk, and how long it’s been since he was. If ever. Being drunk would probably feel very vulnerable, and Malcolm would never like that. Still, it would be a fun thing to see, with his inhibitions relaxed.

“Would you feel up to having something to eat?” I point to the tray on the over-bed table. “You should really have something in your stomach, or you may start to feel queasy. You don’t need to eat all of it if you don’t want to.”

I pull the tray closer, in the hope that the smell as well as the sight of the food on it will stimulate his appetite. It’s not surprising that he asks for some grapes, and obviously enjoys the cool burst of them in his dry mouth. After he’s had a few he also eats some cheese, though no crackers, and then finishes off the grapes. Even less surprisingly, he fancies the pineapple, though he grumbles a bit that I’ve chopped most of it up into the rice so he has to take on board some of that as well.

Still, pineapple is pineapple, and rice pudding is nourishing, so he picks up the bowl and starts spooning the mix into his mouth. I’m pleased to note that his grip is fairly steady, though his movements are slow – he has to put more effort than usual into not spilling any.

I wait till he’s finished most of it before telling him gently that Trip and I have done what he asked with what was taken out of him during surgery, so he can stop worrying about it now.

He freezes with the spoon halfway to his mouth. “You checked it,” he says flatly.

“Yes.” I put a hand lightly on his shoulder. “I’m so sorry, Malcolm. To do that to you was just – unspeakable.”

For a long moment he just stares straight ahead. “Not unspeakable. Just another part of the process,” he says at last, with deep bitterness. “Maybe it was just more amenable to a hybrid passenger than a human’s would have been. Phlox would have sorted all that out beforehand. ‘It’s nothing even faintly personal, General, so no hard feelings, hm?’”

His savage mimicry makes me wince. Once again I wish that I believed in hell, because there doesn’t seem to be anywhere else that Phlox deserves to end up in.

I want to lick-kiss him, but while he’s in this mood I don’t quite have the nerve. So I compromise by stroking his hair, a form of contact he's become quite comfortable with in recent weeks, at least from me. It needs trimming – it used to be kept quite short in the laboratory, but since he came here it’s been growing out and has acquired a nice natural wave. Still, it’s starting to look a bit long, especially at the back of his neck, where he always had it cut severely across.

“Anyway, it’s gone now. And so is he,” I say quietly. “You’re back to what you ought to be, Malcolm. At least we can be thankful for that.”

I feel rather than hear the short huff of a breath that suggests he’s not especially thankful, but at least he starts eating again, and downs the last couple of spoonfuls in moody silence.

“Did Tucker throw up?” he asks at last, setting down the bowl. He seems a little more lucid now; maybe the stimulation of company and eating is helping him recover more quickly. “When you found out, I mean. I know he did in the theatre.”

“He was upset. For you, not himself. But no, he wasn’t sick again.” The memory comes back to me of Trip cursing as the scanner’s results scrolled inexorably onto the screen. I’ve heard some language in my time, but he used some words I hadn’t even heard before. I’m not sure who he was badmouthing more, Phlox or Alpha, or maybe sometimes the two of them were interchangeable. Even Em came in for some, for not putting a stop to it; and for all that on one level I sort of have some faint sympathy for her even now, utterly out of her depth in Alpha’s power, the rest of me remembers how she engineered my transfer into the monitoring room because I dared to care for the hapless victim of The Project who was carrying her baby. There’s little doubt that sooner or later – probably sooner – she would have killed me.

“And you say everything was disposed of.”

“Just the way you told us to.”

Malcolm nods. He pushes away the tray and table, and settles himself back wearily on the pillows. I watch the troubled frown clear slowly away from his forehead. “Good.”

Not absolutely everything has been disposed of, of course. All the stuff that was removed during surgery has gone, along with the evidence of its existence and all the records of its nature; yes, those are now just so many molecules hurled out into space on the widest possible dispersal pattern. But one thing still remains to be dealt with.

At a more suitable time. ****

* * *

**Chapter Fifty-Eight**

**Transition**

_Commodore Charles Tucker III_

Right.

If I thought that getting Reed off the station was risky, when he was so close to the end of his rope he must have been holding on to the last threads by his fingernails, then let’s not kid ourselves about what it’s going to be like getting him back there now he’s awake and alert and – if I know anything about him at all – waiting for one split second of opportunity to get free and get control of the situation.

If he does that, we’re all dead. But then he’s not just the Head of Imperial Security, he’s the Head of the Department of Dirty Tricks as well. If he was a snake and you cut his head off I’d guarantee the other end of him would sprout fangs and bury them in your hand, so I’m not about to underestimate by one single millimeter the threat he represents, not just to me but to all the other people who’ve been involved not just in his rescue but his care. My family are among these, and for all that I’ve been reluctantly impressed by the relationship that’s developed between him and Daddy, I still wouldn’t trust him to take that into consideration when ordering his MACOs to make wholesale arrests of the lot of us. The thought of what would likely happen next gives me the cold shudders; it wouldn’t just be me who’d suffer, though there’s no doubt he’d make an example of me. Every last one of my family could be shut into jail, sent off to a penal colony, or just simply put up against a wall and shot.

I put Amanda in charge of the operation. She has a keen grasp of tactics, and plans the procedure with military precision; she even arranges for a diversion to take place just a few miles away from the Bunker, so that any eyes that may be on the watch for unusual activity (and the Empire is always on the watch for anything that could be construed as even potentially threatening) will have other things to focus on rather than what we’re going to be getting up to. There’s an old warehouse that’s too rickety to even provide a safe shelter for homeless folk, and a few cans of accelerant will ensure that it goes up like a torch. Even with the hot desert wind blowing sparks about, it’s at a safe distance from any populated area; people can gather and enjoy the spectacle without having to worry about it spreading.

Nightfall in the desert is not always a spectacular event. On the rare cloudy day or the more common windy days when the dust particle count is high, you can get magnificent sunsets with colors in the sky ranging through all the hues of the rainbow from the liquid shine of molten gold to lemony yellow and tangerine orange, from the most delicate, almost translucent pastels to rich, supersaturated purples and magentas. On clear days, you don’t get a lingering twilight like you do when there are dust particles or water droplets in the air to reflect and refract the light of the setting sun. Instead, the sky goes smoothly from the cerulean blue of daytime to a silvery gray as the sun first dips below the horizon, to deep midnight blue and finally black as it fully sets. One minute the sun is blazing straight across the valley from the west, and the next – it almost seems to happen too fast to take it in – the stars are popping out.

So, on a clear day such as this has been, the timing to catch those very few minutes of indistinctness, where the low sun’s dazzling and the shadows are getting longer and darker, has to be ultra-precise. Spy satellites don’t like that time of day; the sun’s heat beating up off the ground interferes with the thermal cameras and the shadows and fading light make details indistinct for the standard ones. With this in mind, we always time the shuttle’s arrival for just about sundown – it’s cloaked of course (an ordinary one would be seen and tracked), but it still kicks up dust as it arrives, and there’s the opening of the bay doors under the conservatory to admit it that we definitely don’t want coming to the attention of the authorities.

The Bunker will still carry on with operations when Reed’s been transferred back to Jupiter Station, but there will be fewer people here. I’ve had to have extra security in place, as much for our protection as his, though we kept him well covered when he arrived and cleared the halls whenever we moved him out of his sublevel so that nobody apart from those who actually had to know of his presence ever glimpsed exactly whom we’ve been keeping so carefully locked away in a super-secure part of the underground facility. I have them on high alert as the day ticks away, and finally I go down to Reed’s room to let Liz know that it’s nearly time for her to get General Chaos ready to travel.

“Where are you taking me?” he demands, glaring at me as he tries to sit up against the strap round his chest. I know I'm risking all the good work we've done by strapping him down, but I can work on rebuilding what little trust we've established once I have him back on the station. If we all end up dead because I gave him too much leeway during the move I won't have the chance to work on anything, ever again. One thing's for damned sure, I'm not going to pull another bonehead maneuver like I did giving him the disruptor on the day of his surgery.

We’ve quite deliberately kept it from him that he’s going anywhere (finding out might spook him into trying to break out, and though given his physical condition I’d bet long odds he couldn’t make it as far as the outer doors, he could certainly injure himself trying), so this news is never going to go down well. If I had my druthers, I'd put it off a few more weeks, or even months, until I was more certain of his trust in me and of how much I could possibly trust him; but we have a VIP visit coming up on the station, and between that, the construction on the hospital, and the additional personnel for the new projects that'll be kicking off in the next few weeks, Jupiter Station is really going to be jumping. If I were to wait any longer, not only would it be much harder to get away for my sort of weekly visits, but when we did move him, there would be a lot more people to get past on the way to his quarters, increasing our risk of exposure dramatically.

So, it's pretty much now or never.

“Somewhere that’s a lot safer than here,” I reply, quite unnecessarily checking that the restraints are secure on his bed. We've only used the one around his chest to minimize the trauma to him of being held down, and he can't reach the clasps, so he's not getting up, but he's clearly raging.

“Thank you for the information, Commodore, but there’s ‘safer’ as in ‘safer for you’ and ‘safer’ as in ‘safer for me’. I’m strenuously inclined to think we’re talking about the former.”

“Well, Mal, I’m not sayin’ you’re in the wrong, but there’s a third sort – ‘safer’ as in ‘safer for both of us’. An’ that’s where you’re goin’.”

“Who the _fucking hell_ gave you the right to move me anywhere without my consent?” he hisses.

“I’m real sorry it pisses you off, Mal, but right now ‘might’ equals ‘right’. I’m doin’ this for your good, but I don’t expect you to believe that. So I’m just gonna have to make sure you keep quiet an’ don’t do anything stupid like try to give us away when we take you out of here.”

If eyes were lasers his glare would cut me in half. “When I manage to escape–”

“Yeah, I know. You’ll make an example of me. I get the picture.” I check my chronometer. “Liz, it’s comin’ up time to start. You know the procedure.”

She does, and she doesn’t like it. On Ginny's advice I had the orderlies put the chest restraint on him; after having been strapped down for the better part of a year already, doing that would be a betrayal for which even Liz could never be forgiven. But when it comes to dosing him with mysterious substances she’s the only one he trusts not to poison him, so like it or not, she has to be the one to do it. 

When they were originally transporting him from the shuttle he wasn't even conscious, so Liz and Amanda were able to just cover him right up to the top of his head and roll him in on the gurney. This time, however, we can practically guarantee that left to his own devices, he’ll pick his time to start shouting. He may not be able to see through whatever we cover him with but he can hear through it, and the instant he picks up any indication that there may be other people nearby he’ll start yelling at the top of his voice, letting the world know exactly who and where he is. True, in his physical condition that’s risky in itself, but I can’t depend on him not being willing to take that risk in his determination to get free.

There are only two ways to prevent this. We could gag him, though getting a gag into his mouth would be an ugly business even if we could manage it, but even gagged he could make noise – squealing and kicking out, attracting any attention he can get, even at the risk of injuring himself if he has to. The other, though more extreme, will be a lot more effective.

Liz picks up the prepared hypospray. We’ve already argued over this and I know she’s not happy, but she knows there’s no real alternative.

He catches the movement out of the tail of his eye. His head whips around, but I’m ready for him: I grab his wrists and hold them still while she administers the sedative into the side of his neck.

His curses go garbled, slur and slide into silence. His head lolls back on the pillow. His eyes don’t quite shut, but stay open on an unforgiving glitter aimed straight at Liz.

“Don’t you go blamin’ the lieutenant here for obeyin’ my orders,” I tell him, taking up the control to lower the bed flat for travel. “You want to blame somebody, you blame me.”

No response. Though I can guess without any difficulty at all that Reed blames both of us equally, and will unleash the torments of hell on both of us if he ever gets the chance.

Quickly we slide a set of radiation covers over him and the gurney, turning it into what is essentially a lead-lined coffin on wheels, and switch on the portable monitor that begins to emit a tick-tick-tick that will warn off anyone from coming close to it. Liz and I don the appropriate hazmat suits, and push the gurney out of the door and up the corridor to the turbo-lift.

In the event, our preparations run like clockwork. Even Mother Nature has done her bit by stirring up a wind that blows the sand about in all directions, neatly concealing both the arrival and the departure of the cloaked shuttle; the security guards in the Bunker have been warned in advance that a radiation victim is being moved, so they keep a respectful distance from the gurney with the ominously ticking monitor hanging underneath it. It takes barely five minutes to secure everything for departure, and then we’re lifting away from the desert and heading for space.

If there was any way to just beam Reed onto the station, I'd do it, but unless we beamed him into one of the dead zones his arrival would be detected and investigated – unless I ordered otherwise, which would both arouse more curiosity than a victim of radiation poisoning and give away that I knew the nature of the mysteriously arrived package. In addition, the dead zones are all farther away from the quarters I've had prepared for Reed than the docking bay I've arranged to use, so the most sensible plan is to just sneak him onto the station in plain sight.

And our luck holds out at Jupiter Station. Although the docking bay’s location is still at a distance from where I’ve arranged for Reed to be secreted and means that we can’t completely avoid the risk of being seen, our hazmat suits hide our faces pretty well and nobody ever wants to come closer than absolutely necessary to a radiation source, however well shielded it may be. We complete the traverse to the other pylon as though it’s just another burn victim we’re taking somewhere he or she needs to be, and nobody gives us a second glance. There’s not even anyone in or waiting for the turbo-lift when it arrives, so nobody sees that the car travels not upward to where the _Livingston_ 's coupled up with the station but downward to the high security levels.

Finally, we push Reed’s gurney into what’ll be his quarters from now on. They're not luxurious – they were never designed as a VIP guest room – but though the security’s more than adequate to make sure he won’t be going anywhere in a hurry, they're no prison cell. He has a small, neat bathroom, a chair, an over-bed table and night-stand, a TV monitor and a few pieces of equipment that might come in handy during his treatment – the presence of a defibrillator is a bit chilling, but it’s better to have one and not need it than need one and not have it.

With a sigh of relief, I pull off the hazmat mask. The suit has its own circulated air, but it gets hot and confining; we took them off during the shuttle flight, but it doesn’t take long for them to heat up again. Liz’s face as she emerges from the protective hood is pink and damp, and mine’s probably the same.

Without a doubt, Reed has not enjoyed his journey here. Switching off the monitor – its job’s done now – I unzip the radiation cover and pull it off. I also whip off the chest restraint. He can’t reach the clasps for himself and I don’t want to keep him tied down for one second longer than absolutely necessary.

The sedative is starting to wear off. With difficulty, he turns his head towards me and starts swearing. At least, it would be swearing, but his mouth’s not fully under his control yet, so all that comes out is a general slavering sound.

It ought to be funny, but it’s not. In a weird way, it sounds more menacing than any stream of curses could.

Liz is standing beside me. She looks afraid, and looking into Reed’s glare of helpless ferocity, I can understand why.

I’ve rescued this evil little bastard. I’ve risked _everything_ on the hope that I could somehow, possibly, turn him, and after today, as necessary and urgent as the move might have been, that slim hope might now be lost to me forever.

What the hell was I _thinking?_

* * *

**Chapter Fifty-Nine**

**Hostage**

_Commodore Charles Tucker III_

I _knew_ it was all going way too well. After a day or two letting him cool down after the transfer, Liz got Malcolm back into his routine, more or less. Of course, I haven't yet worked out a way for Ginny to come to the station every day, and he doesn't get the social time he did with my family and staff at dinner in the Bunker or the evening talks with Daddy, but I'm sure he knows we're doing the best that we can. 

I also made damned sure Malcolm knows why he's safer here now than he would have been if he'd remained in the bunker. Things are really jumping here now. We're building a new hospital to replace our sickbay. We've added the refitting operation to our new construction and salvage departments. Now that we have our maintenance and repair roster for secure projects completed, they're returning to the station and Corporal Cole has resumed her duties as a secure courier for the projects (and will soon resume making humanitarian runs for me). And the damage the station sustained in the explosion has highlighted the need for an overhaul. Our personnel has doubled for all the new projects we've taken on since the explosion, and we're still only seventy percent staffed. So, there's just too damned many people around here these days and too much activity for me to be sneaking off to the Bunker every week. 

And my getting caught wouldn't even be the worst thing that could happen. The worst thing would be someone noticing my disappearances, finding the dead zone I use to sneak out, thinking to look for and eventually locating the cloaked shuttle (it does create a very minor spatial disturbance, but it might be some time before anyone thinks to look for it because cloaking technology has not officially been perfected for use among the 'Fleet yet), and following me back to the Bunker.

Of course, a rather sullen "I understand," in response to my explanation of why we had to move him when we did is the only thing he's said to me since we brought him here, but he understood, so I let that be enough. Liz said he was completely compliant with his physiotherapy, his meds, and everything else she asked of him, so I was probably kidding myself to think everything was going okay.

Which, I suppose, is why, when I had the frantic squawk from Eloise it was almost like I was expecting it.

Besides being the Empire's largest ship-building facility, Jupiter Station is also an R&D hub. Experts from different disciplines come together here to pool their knowledge and create everything from new and better tools, weapons, and shields to more efficient computers, more effective medical treatments and drugs, and tastier and more nutritious field rations. The projects are scattered throughout the station, wherever the most appropriate facilities and equipment already exist, so it's not uncommon to have a top secret lab right next to a general storage locker or to have an office processing confidential data just down the hall from a recreation lounge. As long as I've been running the place, we've kept a list of which offices, labs, bays, and storage compartments are being used for classified projects, though only those who've been involved or had some other need to know ever knew what kind of research was being done in any given area. The list is a failsafe intended to keep my maintenance and sanitation people from accidentally accessing areas they shouldn't. If a door's security settings won't give one of my people access to clean, inspect, or perform repairs behind it, the first thing they do, before trying to override the lock, is check the list. If the space they're trying to access is on it, they send their supervisor a notice with the room number and the task they were supposed to complete and just move on. The supervisor then contacts the person in charge of the secret project and works out when and how the job gets done, if it's even truly necessary at that time.

Since the explosion, we've built upon that list. In addition to having at least one maintenance engineer assigned to every project, each one also has an 'emergency on-call' team. Who's on the team depends on the project – if it's mostly data processing, there might be an IT specialist; if they're inventing new weapons or explosives, someone with experience in ordnance disposal – but whatever the project involves, at least three people show up: a MACO for security and to make any arrests that might be necessary, a medic for obvious reasons, and me or one of my department heads to manage station personnel at the scene and knock down any paranoid security barriers the project runners might put up to protect their research at the expense of handling the trouble and keeping people safe.

Since Reed is _my_ project, his quarters are on that list, and I am on his emergency team, along with Liz Cutler, Amanda Cole, and two of the MACOs from the Bunker who have been part of the operation since we delivered Reed there: Private Jones, who was Ginny's guard every time she met with Reed, and Sergeant Lymon, who brought Admiral and Mrs Reed to meet me at the gas station. (I have, over the years, for one reason or another convinced the Empress to assign nearly a dozen MACOs exclusively to me, outside of their normal chain of command, and I trust them all completely to carry out the orders I give them. Amanda, because of the mobility her status as a courier grants her, knows more about my shenanigans than anyone, and of those MACOs who work for me, only she, Jonesy, Lymon, and Sturges, who elected to stay back at the Bunker and manage the humanitarian operations while trying to crib my mama's recipes, know about Reed.)

Luckily, I wasn’t all that far away from Reed's temporary quarters when the call came through, but I still barreled down there like my ass was on fire, my heart thundering; and what I see when I get there confirms my worst fears.

At least it’s not Liz, but it’s bad enough. Jonesy, who apparently witnessed the event first hand, fills me in on the details while Cole keeps her phase rifle trained on the door and Lymon and Austin Burnell (I wonder what the hell he's doing here, but that can wait) pull up the internal security cameras to get a view of what's going on in there. Little Allie Nash, works in the Mess Hall, was taking a lunch trolley to a repairs team somewhere in that area; I’d authorized this years ago, soon after I first took over, because in some parts of the station, the distance between wherever a team has to be to do their work and the Mess can sometimes mean half the lunch break’s taken up just getting there, and it just never occurred to me to order the mess hall staff to re-route their deliveries when I took this corridor off the maintenance schedule. Allie's not stupid, though, she would never have gone into some random VIP's quarters on her own (besides, I’ve installed an access code, just to make sure no-one goes in these particular quarters by mistake), and a fallen trolley and spilled food in the corridor outside are all the evidence necessary to conclude that she was grabbed there and dragged inside.

Jonesy explains that it was his shift to monitor the general. He, Lymon and Amanda have been taking it in shifts ever since we brought Reed to the station. They've set themselves up a comfortable little office right across the corridor from Reed's quarters where they can monitor who comes and goes without invading the general's privacy. If there's anything he needs or wants, or if he'd even just like to have a chat with someone besides Liz or me (unlikely, but you never know), all he has to do is press a button and one of them can be there right away.

With a lock on his door that can only be accessed from the outside and a MACO watching that door round the clock, Reed should have been locked up tighter than the Imperial Crown Jewels; but I forgot to reroute the damned meal deliveries and I underestimated his ability to monkey with an electronic lock. Of course, Amanda will say she should have recognized the danger, and Lymon will give her a pass because he's the ranking officer and should have caught anything she missed. We'll all excuse Private Jones for sharing in the mistake and use this as a teachable moment for him because he is just a private and still a kid and can't be expected to have the experience to anticipate every possible way that everything can go all to shit. But ultimately, Reed is my project, and therefore my responsibility, so anything bad that happens here is my fault.

Since the trolley was going right by them anyway, when Reed's security team called in an order, the mess hall offered to have it dropped off. Once he realized that he was getting three squares a day delivered hot from the mess and there were only three MACOs delivering them to him, it was just a matter of timing. It was just convenient that it was an innocent young girl making the delivery when the youngest and least experienced of the MACOs was on duty. There's no guarantee a different server, older, stronger, male or female could have resisted being taken or that Cole or Lymon would have been able to prevent it when Jones could not, but today, with little Allie and young Jonesy, was certainly the best chance Reed was going to get, and he was ready.

Allie had just parked her trolley up and was about to buzz the door to the MACOs' office when the door across the hall hissed open. Reed snatched her from behind, and darted back into his quarters, the door hissing shut behind them. Jones, who had seen Allie coming on his monitors and moved to get the door before she even buzzed, was just in time to open it on an empty – save for the overturned trolley with its wheels still spinning and food still tumbling onto the carpet – corridor.

I get this mental image of a cute little harmless ladybug wandering innocently past this dark, seemingly empty hole, and suddenly a big black hairy thing with fangs darts out and....

I take a few deep breaths. I need to handle this carefully or at least one person is going to die. Thing is, if one does I need to make sure it’s the right one.

I press the chime. I’m not going to make the mistake of busting in there, not with what’s waiting for me. Because of course he’s waiting for me, and if I make him wait too long he’s going to find ways of amusing himself. And given his long sorry history, I’m not even going to risk making Allie his new toy.

“Malcolm, I’m comin’ in. Just me, right?”

_“I’ll hold you to that.”_

Colonel Burnell, who I can only assume has opted not to call in Major Crawley because the identity of the subject in question makes this a whole lot bigger than a matter of station security, hoists a phase rifle silently and catches my eye. Of course, by now, he and Lymon have used the internal cameras to find out what the situation is and fully briefed Amanda and Jonesy, so Burnell knows exactly who's in there and where he is. One clear shot and he’s down – if I can count on Burnell to order the shot, if necessary. I figure Austin's still a decent man, but since his promotion, he's acquired a lot more power. Lymon and Cole, I can count on to know what to do, and Jonesy will do what he's told. Even if they hadn't already proven themselves one-hundred percent loyal to me, they're in no position to benefit or suffer regardless of whether Reed lives or dies. They're formally under my command and not high enough up the food chain to advance if Reed's eliminated. But I can't blame any man's instincts for self-preservation and self-advancement. Reed is – at least technically – still Burnell's boss, so doing what he needs to do to protect himself might not be in line with what I need from him, and if Cole, Lymon or Jones try to do what I might need, Austin might feel obliged to interfere. So, I could end up with a fucking MACO firefight out in the corridor while I'm trying to talk General Chaos out of killing some poor kid who was just trying to deliver somebody's goddamn lunch.

The other problem is, Reed probably wrote at least half of the book the MACOs are reading from. He’ll know exactly what the procedure is and he’ll be totally prepared for it, and I can bet my bottom credit that if I don’t walk through that door peacefully and alone, Allie won’t live to kick my ass. With a shake of my head I tell them all to hold off, for now at least.

My first reaction, of course, is to pull back my sleeve and expose the cuff I’m wearing. I won’t deny how strong the temptation is to click away the tiny protective lever and push the button that stops the bastard’s heart in his chest.

 _Third_ problem is, he knows exactly what I can do and either he’s found some way to get around it (unlikely) or he’s finally decided to dare me to do it. Which, of course, I can, but unfortunately even if I do it still gives him enough time to take out his hostage. If you cut a snake’s head off it still has reflexes that allow it to bite, and I’m damn sure the viper behind this door would kill as he took his dying breath.

Just as I reach for the door control there are flying footsteps down the corridor and Liz arrives at a dead run. _Now_ it's a fucking party.

“No!” I say harshly as she opens her mouth; I already know what she’s going to say. “You wait here. This is _my_ problem.”

I know she wants to argue and I also know she has the sense to know when she’d be wasting her breath. She takes a long look at me, draws a longer breath, and nods.

Some of me actually wants to stand back and let her take over. If anyone can reach him I think it’ll be Liz. But this _is_ my problem – _he_ is my problem – and the rest of me knows that if I give in to that temptation, no matter what the outcome Reed will know he won. Worse still, all these other people will _see_ that he won, and that’s not just something I want to avoid for the sake of my vanity, it’ll obliterate the trust my people will have in me if I have to rely on sweet little Liz Cutler to control the rabid animal I’ve brought among them. If I’m in control of Jupiter Station I have to be able to deal with everyone on it – _including_ General Chaos in there. Otherwise I’m taking the most unforgivable risks not only with station security but with the lives of everyone on the station itself; not to mention with Imperial Security as it relates to the shipbuilding and research functions that take place here. So right here and now, I have to prove to him and them that I’m in charge here. And I’m not giving him the satisfaction of proving I’m not.

I press the door control. Everyone stands clear as the door hisses back, just in case he’s somehow managed to get hold of a phase pistol or something. It’s not likely, but with a bastard like Reed you don’t take chances.

No phase pistol fire materializes. I take a deep breath and step into the room.

He’s backed into a corner and he has Allie pulled up against him. Her wrists are tied together with surgical tape and more is wound across her mouth, presumably holding a wad of something inside it to keep her quiet. Above it her eyes are wide and terrified.

I can’t blame her; Reed at his best is pretty goddamn scary, and having him tie you up and hold you hostage would freak anyone out – he earned his reputation. But I can’t let him go, no matter what; I’d only be the first of the people to suffer if he got free, and it was my decision to risk trying to turn him. I can’t let others pay for my mistake.

We don’t trust him with metal cutlery, of course, and nothing is left in the room after he’s eaten. But he’s snapped pieces off of the blade of a plastic knife he must have snatched up off the trolley outside, and though the original must have been practically blunt like plastic implements always are, what’s left of the blade is a jagged row of teeth. From the shallow, bleeding cut on Allie’s face he’s already demonstrated how sharp it is – a demonstration that’s undoubtedly meant for me even more than it is for her. Because it’s now resting under her jaw, right up against the carotid artery. And I know that one press of the button on my cuff and it’ll drive upward and inward, and he’ll kill her in front of my eyes.

He’s got his head low, watching me over her shoulder to present the smallest available target if I’m stupid enough to think about shooting. His mouth’s not in view so I can’t see if he’s grinning, but his eyes are very wide and sort of crazy looking, and I immediately think about Miguel’s warning that after all the drugging he had to endure his brain may go ‘in and out’. I’m not sure which would be the better option for me; ‘In’ may be cunning and ruthless but ‘out’ may be dangerously stupid as well as bat-shit crazy. Either way, he’s got some game going – I’ve just got to find some way of working out what it is. And till I do, I’ve got to play along, for all our sakes.

I don't speak to Reed at first; I need to reassure Allie. If she loses it, she's dead, but if I can keep her calm, maybe I can reason with him.

"Allie, sweetheart, look at me," I say evenly, and she does. "I know it's a lot to ask, but I need you to relax. Just take a deep breath and let it out, and trust me, okay?"

Her eyes never leave mine as she does what I ask. A bit shakily, but she does it.

"Good girl," I say as soothingly as I can manage. "Do it again." I suspect she and Liz would both slap me into the middle of next week if they knew I was using the same tone and words I used to use with my daddy's horses, but it works. Inside of a minute, she's breathing slowly and steadily, and has stopped shaking.

Reed is flabbergasted; I see the anger well up in his face. She trusts me more than she fears him, and he can't understand it. If he hurts her now, I'll kill him slow and hard, with my bare hands, Liz Cutler's tender little heart be damned!

"Now, Allie, the General an' I are gonna talk for a little bit," I say. "All you need to do is just stand there an' keep cool until we reach some kind of agreement. Can you do that for me?"

She can't nod on account of the knife at her throat, but the grunt she gives me through the gag sure sounds like, "Uh-huh."

Only when I’m as confident as I can be that she’ll stay quiet do I look at Reed. "Just where do you see this situation goin’, Malcolm?" I ask, my voice perfectly level again. Internally I’m trying desperately to think what Ginny would say in this situation – what levers she’d use to reason with him. "What did you expect to happen when you took one of my people hostage?"

One of the reasons we selected this particular room to keep him in is that it only has one door. That’s behind me. There’s a bathroom, too, but there's only about two square feet of real estate in there that isn't occupied by the shower, the toilet and the sink; he'd only trap himself worse if he moved in there. There are no viewing ports and there sure as hell aren’t any chimneys, so I’m not sure why his gaze suddenly flickers around the room like he’s expecting someone to jump out at him; it’s not like there’s anything in it apart from his bed that’s big enough to hide behind, even if someone had already managed to sneak in there. Then he looks back at me, and he squints like he can’t see me properly. 

“I want to get out of here, what else?” he snarls. “I know you can kill me. But can you live with watching this little bitch bleed out in front of you?”

He angles the blade, presses gently. Red runs down the handle and across his fingers, and he licks it up, watching me. 

Now normally, seeing him do something like that would have me wanting to puke. But maybe it’s fury that saves me, fury that he’s terrorizing a cute kid and that I’ve enabled this by not staying one leap ahead of a guy who can strike quicker than a rattlesnake given just one tiny fraction of an opportunity. I know what he is, I know what he can do, and it’s my responsibility to get us all out of this safely – if it’s possible.

Allie’s breath hitches and I calm her down again. He knows to a millimeter where the carotid artery is and if he was trying to nick it the red would already be spurting. This is just to get me angry, and although it does, I won’t give him the satisfaction of seeing that. I just promise myself that he’s running up a bill, and as soon as I can get Allie out of danger he’ll be paying it.

“I thought we were comin’ to some kind of understandin’, Malcolm,” I reply. “I know you were pissed off the way you were brought here, but you know an’ I know that I was just takin’ the appropriate precautions. I’d hoped you’d be bright enough to understand that.” It takes me a moment to be sure my anger won’t show in my voice, and in those few seconds I see his eyes flicker again, and he frowns like he’s puzzled about something.

“You know what I like about a knife?” he says conversationally. “It’s completely _silent._ ” He withdraws the blade for a second and licks that too. “Would you believe, it was seven years before I had my ‘Eureka!’ moment? I thought knives were for savages.” 

It looks like 'out' is going to be really, _really_ ugly.

His tongue leaves a long red streak up Allie’s neck before he continues. “I thought it would be enough to be good at hiding. I thought if I was small enough and quick enough and clever enough I could get away with it.” A soft snigger. “I was wrong.”

I see Allie’s scared glance sideways towards him and I pray she’ll keep still. I’m not sure he has the faintest idea what he’s saying, but I’m absolutely sure that if he was in his right mind he wouldn’t want either of us hearing this. 

“Phase weapons have their uses of course,” he goes on, squeezing his eyes al-most shut, like a purring cat. “But the problem is that they’re so _obvious._ They’re so _visible._ They have no _subtlety._ ” The eyes pop wide open, windows into insanity. “But a knife, you can make a knife out of so many things." He sounds almost gleeful, like me when I'm discussing a new engine enhancement, except he's a hell of a lot creepier, if you ask me. "You can hide it in so many places. And when the time comes to use it, it’s upfront, it’s personal. It _connects._ You feel it going in, you feel it acting. The pain, like an electric charge through your fingers."

Christ almighty, now he sounds like he's talking about sex. _Really good sex._

“ _Lingchi_. The legend. That was what I promised him.” He licks the blade again and points it at his own temple. “Every second, I swore it. In here. I said it over and over again, so they wouldn’t hear me scream.”

Before I can even think about moving, he lays it back, delicately, against the underside of Allie’s jaw. “I got the first bastard before he left school. The next two took a little longer. The fourth had the intelligence to lose himself quite effectively – it was years before I tracked him down. The fifth was a disappointment; he managed to kill himself before I got hold of him. The sixth…. Ah, yes, the sixth. The one who had the bright idea in the first place.” His lips writhe back off his teeth. “I got him eventually. Five years he waited, knowing what was coming. Every day the execution squad fetched him out, every day he didn’t know whether they’d turn around and take him back in or whether they’d keep going to the next set of doors or the one after that or the one after that, whether this was the day they’d finally bring him to me. Five years, one for each of his mates who helped him. And then the cameras were brought in.”

"I remember," I tell him grimly, and I do. It was mandatory viewing throughout the Empire a couple years after the Triad surfaced: ‘General Reed Presents the Revival of the Ancient Art of _Lingchi_ ’. Officially, he was executing a traitor (there were clips from some ‘trial’ or other, probably staged), but now seems it was revenge for something personal he’d suffered when he was still just a kid; truth is I’m sure I wasn’t the only one to wonder what the hell this Sallis guy could possibly have done to earn a death like that. The head of my MACOs was required to take attendance by thumb print and ID swipe. There are so many people stationed here that it took nearly an hour to get everyone checked in - we had to arrange an auditorium for each level so we could fit them all in. Then there weren't enough tissues to go around, and it wasn't just the women weeping. Also according to orders, there were MACOs stationed around each auditorium making sure nobody shut their eyes or turned their heads away for more than a minute. 

There weren't any barf bags either. I felt so bad for the maintenance crew, to have to watch _that_ and then clean up afterward, that I stayed and helped them.

"But you got 'em, Malcolm," I remind him. I don't know where he is or what he's remembering, but I have to get him to put it in the past quick, before he gets too worked up and maybe hurts Allie by accident. "They're never gonna bother you again."

"'Course they won't!" he agrees enthusiastically. Then he gives me perhaps the first genuinely happy smile I have ever seen from him. Unfiltered and unpolluted with anything like irony or malice, it's almost sweet and it makes his whole face light up. 

And it makes my skin crawl when he explains, "They're dead."

I get the feeling knowing who 'they' were and what they did would explain a hell of a lot about General Malcolm Reed and maybe help me deal with this situation too, but I don't dare ask now. Somehow, even not knowing what he's talking about (though I can make a guess or two), I feel kind of bad for him. I remember what Liz told me once about how he didn't learn what pain, fear, and humiliation can do to a man from some book.

I'll still kill him if he hurts Allie, though. With lots of kindness and patience, you can tame a wild dog, even one that's been abused, but the only thing you can do about a mad dog is put him down. And right now, the only thing that tips the scales against Reed being exactly that is that he isn’t frothing at the mouth.

"So if they're dead, what are we doin' here, Malcolm?" I ask, hoping that maybe in his current state he'll think he's won by killing them and doesn't need a hostage, but then he narrows his eyes in that calculating way of his and I realize I was wrong. 

"One has nothing to do with the other, Commodore," he tells me, and the light in his eyes now is of cold, cunning intelligence, not fevered madness. Apparently the General is 'in' again. "I told you, I want to get out of here."

I decide to talk sense to him, now that his sanity's apparently back, and I pray to God it doesn't backfire on me, because if it does, Allie's dead.

"All right," I begin agreeably. "Let's talk about that."

He actually looks surprised that I might be willing to negotiate. "I'm listening."

"Well, I’m guessin’ you already know that if you hurt Allie here, the only way you're ever gonna cross that threshold," I hike my thumb toward the room's only door, "is feet first in a body bag."

In my peripheral vision I can see Allie's eyes go big as saucers at that, but she’s a game kid, she stays steady so I can keep my focus on Reed.

"An' I think if you're honest with yourself, you'll realize you don't have the strength or the stamina yet to take care of yourself in the big, wide world," I continue. “Yeah, I know you could call up some of your MACOs an' I’m sure they’d come runnin’ for you, but it’s gonna take some pullin’ things together now that…" 

I scramble for the right thing to say here. While I'm sure he loved Em and Alpha in whatever way he knows how, I'm just as certain he's mourning his lost revenge as much as he is grieving for them. Those emotions have probably been festering since he first discovered who arranged to take him down, and now would be the absolute worst time to lance that boil. 

"Now that there’s just you holdin’ the reins, you’ll need to be right at the top of your game to handle your people. I’m not sayin’ you couldn’t do it, mind you. What I _am_ sayin’ is that what you’ve been through took a whole lot out of you an’ you need more time to recover. Time you haven’t had yet.”

He's looking sullen, I realize, but not crazy, and not particularly angry, either. I’m actually not telling him anything he doesn’t already know. He’ll have had more than enough time to sum up the situation – and to know that deprived of _any_ ruthless hand on the reins, the MACOs will be starting to get very restless. Of course, he might not remember Ensign Baird's brilliant little spoofing program that he made for Em and Alpha that allows me to transmit video orders wearing a digital mask of his face. I told him about that only hours after he woke up in the bunker following the explosion of my Sickbay, and he's told his parents, but that doesn't mean he's remembering it now. That useful little tool is keeping the lid on things for now, though – just. With Em and Alpha gone, only Baird and I know about it, and if there were any ethical way for me to achieve it, Baird would have forgotten it already because, as useful as it is, that program is also _way_ too goddamned dangerous. Fortunately, the kid is smart enough to realize that if just knowing such a program exists is dangerous, admitting to the wrong person that he's the one who created it, or even that he has the ability to create such a thing, would get him killed pretty damned quick. Liz might have guessed I have something up my sleeve, simply by the fact that the MACOs haven't exploded all over the Empire yet, but she's been around long enough to know better than to speculate about something like that, let alone ask me outright. 

Still, I'm sure Reed's top commanders compare notes, and the fact that none of them has seen him in the flesh for nearly a year now has got to be making them suspicious. I've given them orders they didn't understand, commands that conflicted with their SOP, and instructions that probably just seemed out of character coming from Major Malevolence, or General Disarray for that matter. I’m only glad that Admiral Hernandez seems to be on my side. She’s smart and she’s sharp, and she must know as well as I do that if the MACOs kick off it’ll be enormously destructive – perhaps so much so that the Empire itself could be endangered. So I’m relieved that the few contacts I’ve had from her have hinted – cautiously – that if I need help, hers is the number I need to call. Though I sure hope I’ll never need to call it.

I don't know Reed's people, and I don't have his mind for tactics or strategy, so for the security of the Empire, the sooner we get that tangled up web of scheming spite all tied back up again the better, and Malcolm’s the man to do it – when he’s physically and mentally up to it. And, of course, when I’ve managed to get him onside (if I _can_ ), because just letting him run loose the way he is would be to invite a bloodbath. Hoshi, if she managed to survive at all, would be his ‘consort’ before you could say ‘warp drive’. In the long run that may still be a viable option, but definitely not until or unless we’ve reached some kind of accommodation.

While I've been thinking about how to keep the MACOs from running wild and ripping the Empire apart, Reed's been thinking whatever he's thinking, and God alone knows what's been running through Allie's head. So I decide to move things along one more tiny step.

"It's one thing to snatch an innocent little girl out of the corridor, tie her up, and hold her at knifepoint, Malcolm," I point out, thinking it might be more useful to get him to focus on his own well-being rather than reminding him of what I need from him. I’m careful to keep my voice matter-of-fact; he may know I’m telling nothing but the truth, but he sure won’t take being goaded with it. "But you had the element of surprise then, an' I'll bet now that the adrenaline’s wearin' off, you're gettin' a little tired. Regardless of what you want, you know you're not fit to go anywhere yet, so, why don't you let Allie go, an' I'll stick around till we come up with a plan for how you _can_ get out of here, when you're ready?"

"What do you care what happens to me?" he growls. The bitterness in his voice momentarily makes me feel a bit sorry for him, but then I look at Allie again and I’m furious with him for frightening her like this. Even knowing he probably did it almost in reflex, when his brainwaves had gone out of sync, hardly softens me.

"I don't, particularly, but a good friend of mine does," I tell him flatly, "an' I'll bet if you hurt Allie here, even _she_ ’ll have a hard time overlookin' it. She's out there in the corridor right now, waitin' to see how this turns out."

He throws me a hard, cocky grin that makes me want to hit him. "If you kill me, she'll never forgive you, you know that."

"Probably not," I agree. "An' I'll feel real bad about that…for at least the rest of the day. Then tomorrow, I'll get back to work an’ I’ll have one less problem to think about, as in how to make sure you don’t get up to your old tricks again before I can persuade you I’m bein’ straight with you. Because by that time you’ll just be so many kilos of biological material floatin’ frozen in space, an’ as sorry as I’ll be for Liz, that’s a price I’m prepared to pay for keepin’ my people safe.

“But if we’re talkin’ about Liz, how do you think she'll feel about _you_ if you maim or kill her friend? How much more do you think she can forgive? I think you've noticed by now, she's not the same doormat you stepped all over back on _Enterprise_."

He scowls a bit at my honesty about not exactly grieving over it if I had to kill him, but he’s not about to give up on a weapon he suspects prods me where I’m sensitive. His mouth twists into this perverted little grin. "Why don’t you swap me this one for her, then? She's already damaged goods."

The ungrateful son of a bitch! I have to take a couple of breaths before I can trust myself to answer without telling him what I think of the cruel, vicious little bastard who did all that damage, just because he could and it was _fun_. I can only hope that if they’re listening in outside she’ll hear what he really is, and find a cure for her delusion that he’s worth giving a damn about. 

Knowing what she’s suffered all this time, I want to beat his head into a bloody pulp, and I'm sure he knows it. It's all I can do not to ball my hands into fists, but I don't want to give him any clue how angry he's made me. If I could fold them together, it would be a little easier, but I can't risk him thinking I’m reaching for the cuff – that might push him into pre-empting his death by taking Allie with him. So I just stand there, grit my teeth and remind myself – as I’ve had to do over and over again – of those three words: ‘End of Humanity’. He may be putting up a good front right now of being the cocky, spiteful little shit he always was, but when he was right at the end of his rope those were the words he used. And over the months since then, I’ve had glimpses that suggest that they weren’t just a fluke, that somewhere inside that potentially treacherous and infinitely dangerous guy there really _is_ someone I could work with and maybe, just maybe, even get to like. I can’t, I _won’t_ , let go of the hope that somehow, if I can only get him to trust me just a little, we can find the man who breathed those words.

Down in the Bunker, it had actually started to feel like it was happening. The way he interacted with my family, the way he dealt with his, it all felt like it was starting to come together the way I’d hoped. Then I had to make the move and get him to Jupiter Station, and destroy a lot of my gains in the process. This little episode is probably payback for that, a reaction to his loss of the faith in me that he’d been building, grain by slow painful grain. But if I can get him past that, if I can make him understand that I was only doing what I felt I had to…

‘If’. It’s a big ask. But I’m not going to do it by playing his games, and I’m not handing over Liz Cutler.

"That's not gonna happen, Malcolm!" I deliberately let my voice get a little louder, but carefully make sure I sound firm and not angry. "An' you're not gonna make me agree to anything while you're threatenin' one of my people. I told you before, there's only two things that have to happen for me to let you walk out of here: you have to get well, an' you have to earn my trust.

"Now, this is the _last_ thing you want to do if you're tryin' to earn my trust, so what's it gonna be?" I demand. "Do you want to show me a little good faith an' let Allie walk out of here, or do you want to push your luck an' wait for somethin' _really_ bad to happen to all of us?"

For a couple of very long minutes the silence holds. I’ve put my cards on the table, and I’m not repeating myself. He’s got to make his own mind up.

He watches me. He’s completely motionless, and he never blinks. Then, with an almost playacting grace, he lifts the knife away and lets go of Allie.

Her first instinct, of course, is to bolt. I put my hand up. Reed always had a lot of the instincts of a cat, and a fluttering bird will invariably make a cat pounce. “Slow and easy, Allie,” I tell her gently.

She wobbles across the room towards me, and I pat her on the shoulders, tell her she did real good, and propel her out into the corridor, shouting to Austin that everything’s OK and they can stand down. Untying her can wait, the important thing is to get her out of Reed’s malevolent presence.

I’m not sure everything’s quite that simple, though, not yet. Reed may be a long way short of his best, but I’m guessing he has enough in reserve to leap across the room at me and use that knife. In his heyday I wouldn’t have stood a prayer, and even now I’m not sure he wouldn’t win.

But he doesn’t move. He just stands there, braced, his head high. He’s waiting for the punishment. Cause that’s what happens in his world: you try, you fail, you suffer, and usually you die. And he’s given me more than enough provocation to have me reaching for the cuff. A few hours’ agony on the floor hoping his heart won’t give out should teach him a lesson all right…

I walk towards him and hold my hand out. In the seconds it takes to extend my fingers, my mind creates exactly how it will feel to have those jagged plastic teeth slash through my flesh, severing tendons and blood-vessels. I remember the close-ups of his fingers carefully and lovingly guiding a stainless steel scalpel through already lacerated skin, opening it like a scream.

He drops the knife into my palm silently.

I toss it aside and slip an arm around his shoulders. Suddenly he’s gone ghostly pale, and even Reed can’t change color for the asking. This is reaction, his over-driven body paying back after he demanded too much of it too soon, and I catch him just as he starts to sway.

“Liz! Get in here!” I shout. I’m just getting him towards the bed as she rushes in, and the two of us manage to manhandle him onto it. His eyelids are fluttering, he looks completely dazed, but she pulls out a hypospray and gives him a shot of something that seems to pull him back from passing out.

As he blinks back into reality, I bite back the urge to make some cutting remark about being helped by ‘damaged goods’. If she didn’t hear it from him she won’t hear it from me. Still, as she gently makes him more comfortable and asks him how he’s feeling, I see him dart a glance at her that contains something I never thought I’d see on his face. I swear, he actually looks _ashamed_.

 _So he ought to_ , says a stern voice in my head that I recognize as Mama’s. But then, back in the Bunker, he was always on his best behavior for her after that first day. Mama never really got to see how damaged and dangerous Malcolm still is, or she’d know just as I do that this one small moment is another dewdrop in the desert, another dewdrop that joins _‘End of Humanity’_ in my mind as a sign that maybe, just maybe, if we can collect enough of them to get a little trickle going, there’s hope for us yet.

Liz tells him to rest and that she’ll bring him something to eat in half an hour. He nods, though he doesn’t say anything. I glance back as we leave, and find him watching me.

“When you’re feelin’ up to it we’ll have that conversation about getting' you out of here, Malcolm,” I tell him. “I’ll come down after my shift ends tonight. I’m sure we can come to some arrangement.” 

His face is as unreadable as the Sphinx. Maybe he believes me, maybe he doesn’t. I think this is an acid test for me, and he’s waiting to see exactly what the results will be. Well, he’s in for a pleasant surprise. Of course I’m not going to let him walk all around the station, but I can sympathize with how stir-crazy he must be at the moment. I think he’s earned a little freedom – a very little, till we all see what he’ll do with it. That’s something I can allow him up here, far more safely than I could ever have done down in the Bunker.

Outside in the corridor, Burnell is competently applying a temporary dressing to Allie’s face. As soon as she sees me coming out safe and sound she bursts into a storm of tears and throws herself into my arms – good job T’Pol’s not here to see _that_ , though at a guess she’d make allowances in the circumstances.

“Sir, thank you, I was so _scared!_ ” she sobs. "Wa- Was that really _General Reed_?"

“You did a great job, Allie. I was real proud of you,” I tell her, ignoring the question. “You keepin’ your head the way you did kept everything calm enough for me to work things out. Now go along with Liz here an' she’ll patch you up. He only gave you a bit of a scratch by way of a warning, a few days an’ your pretty face’ll be just fine again.”

“Sir, you’re not – aren’t you going to lock him up?” she quavers. Over her head, Burnell’s eyebrows ask the same question.

“Well, I’ll have this corridor cordoned off for a while, just so we don’t have any more ‘accidents,’" I assure her as I pass her off to Liz with a look that says ‘get her the hell out of here’, and though Liz leads her a few steps away and starts flashing a light in her eyes – whether to distract her or with some real purpose behind it, I don't know – she doesn't actually _go._

Realizing that Liz is desperate to know what I'm going to do to Malcolm next, I decide on the spot that making an issue of getting Allie out of here right away will arouse her curiosity and Liz's anxiety more than carrying on with both of them still here. I'm confident that, in order to protect Malcolm, Liz will impress upon Allie the need for absolute secrecy and the possible consequences of breaching security before they get to the clinic that's still standing in for Sickbay until the new hospital is up and running. 

"Truth is, I think if we handle this properly we’ll all be a lot safer. If he knows he’s trusted to take a little walk around an' behave himself, he won’t feel any need to try an' bust himself out. That was my fault – I should’ve realized something like this might happen.”

They all look a bit doubtful, and I suppose I can’t blame them for that. It must be a bit like inviting a giant tarantula to take a casual stroll around the place, sightseeing. But yet again, I feel the burden and the responsibility of how much they trust me. I suggest something as crazy as this, and because they believe in me, they’ll go along with it.

As Liz leads Allie off toward Sickbay, already reminding her that she can't talk about this to just anybody, but that if she feels the need to talk to _somebody_ , Liz will be there or can get her in touch with someone who can help, I glance at Burnell. “Was the comm. on?”

“I diverted the signal to my earphone, sir,” he answers, giving me a straight look and touching his earpiece. “Thought it best not to make everything public knowledge.”

So Liz _didn’t_ hear!

Not that I’m going to tell Malcolm that, of course. If one single seed of remorse has somehow found a tiny crevice in that stony heart of his, I’m going to leave it there, water it and hope it grows roots. An ash seedling rooted somehow in a little-bitty crack in one corner of our backyard when I was about eleven. By the time I got dragged into the Fleet, it was working on lifting the concrete.

I clap Colonel Burnell on the shoulder and congratulate him, thanking him for taking charge of the security team since he was here (finding out why can wait a little longer) and suggesting we should get together soon for a drink and a chat. At the same time, I make a mental note to get Eloise to roster Lymon, Cole and Jones each for an extra hour of calling time. I'm sure Eloise knows because she handles the schedule, but I doubt many others have bothered to do the math to find out that the block of time I’ve recently acquired to dole out as rewards and incentives exactly matches the amount of time that was allocated to the Sickbay personnel on duty when the ‘tragic accident’ occurred. If I make a habit of using it up, there's a good chance I'll get to keep it when the hospital's fully installed and staffed and all our new projects are up and running. After all, there's plenty of bandwidth left on the frequencies we use for personal communications and the new staff can be assigned their own blocks of time as they come on board, so long as I can convince the Empress that the small excess has become part of the status quo and is important to the efficiency of the station.

He grins and walks away, opening his communicator to arrange with Janice Crawley for a guard to be posted, and I step to the comm. panel to call Maintenance to get the mess cleaned up. Just for a minute, though, I simply lean against the wall, letting the tension seep out of me.

I got away with it. Was I clever, or lucky? Did he realize I meant every word I said and he was out of options, or is he somehow – however slowly and reluctantly – starting to trust me?

I’ll get no answers yet. But things could have ended a heck of a lot worse. So however crazy it may seem, I have to repay this phantom ‘trust’ of his with a gesture of my own.

I’m not stupid of course. Till Miguel and Ginny give me the all-cIear on the mental stability front, I have to bear in mind that however reasonable Reed may be when he’s ‘in’, at the drop of a hat he may go ‘out’ again and turn stupid and dangerous, without any remembrance or regard for anything he and I have agreed to. Wherever he goes he’ll be guarded, and I’ll set cast duranium limits to where he can go, and make sure he knows exactly what and where they are. But it feels, just a little, as if something has changed.

Am I being stupid to think I’ve made progress?

* * *

**Chapter Sixty**

**Suspicion**

_General Malcolm Reed_

‘I’ll come down after my shift ends tonight’.

Those were his words. Those were his _exact_ words.

I know what the shift rotations are on Jupiter Station. And I know that, when you’re in charge, things come up that mean you can’t always finish bang on time. But four hours have gone by since shift changeover, and ... well, I was going to say ‘I’m a reasonable man’, but perhaps that would be pushing it. Still, when you’ve handed over your only small advantage in exchange for the word of a man who’d quite cheerfully push you into a warp engine but for the fact that your mortal remains would probably put the power flow half a percent off optimum, I defy anyone not to get a _little_ concerned when there seems to be an unaccountable hiatus with the reciprocation.

I still haven’t really forgiven him for the way he got me onto the station, though on reflection he was entirely sensible to make sure I couldn’t do anything sneaky in the effort to escape. If I could have done I would have done, regardless of the cost (and risk) to me and others. Still, in the meantime I’ve had time to think and accepted his reasoning. It wasn’t personal, it was just logical, and however much it infuriated me at the time there doesn’t seem to be a lot of use in continuing to harp on about it. That’s not to say I won’t remember it in the reckoning if and when the time comes for the scores to be settled, but that time is considerably in the future.

I will admit, if only to myself, that taking that woman hostage probably wasn’t the brightest thing I ever did. There may be some excuse in what that Doctor Salazar and Ginny said about my mental processes going ‘in and out’, but I’m annoyed with myself for losing that much track of reality. Tucker (blast him!) has got me cornered good and proper, and the fact is that I really wasn’t going to get anywhere with the hostage scenario. Like it or not, I _am_ too weak as yet to function on my own.

If I’d still had ... had ... had Em, I might have managed. Whatever else, when we were back on _Enterprise_ we kept each other’s backs. It’ll take a long while before I come to any sort of terms with the way she betrayed me; the way _they_ betrayed me.

.....

But there’s no-one else, absolutely no-one anymore, that I’d trust further than I could spit them. Liz Cutler might have been an exception, but she lost that privilege when she sedated me for my move from the bunker. I know she was acting under orders, but at this present moment that doesn’t feel like enough of an excuse. Yes, just call me unreasonable. I’ve been called a lot less polite things than that...

And when I review the ranks of the assorted little bright-eyed rats ready to dive for power at the first sign of weakness, the first name that springs to mind is Erika Hernandez. To tell the truth, I’m amazed she hasn’t already moved. It’s only a question of time before she does, and it’s time I don’t have – time that’s ticking away, Tick! Tock! Tick! Tock! on the stability of the Empire.

Tick! Tock! Tick! Tock!

The LED clock on the wall doesn’t tick or tock of course, but its soundless movement alternately hypnotises and maddens me. It feels like a countdown to disaster. Because if Hernandez manages to muster up enough support she could be a real damned threat, and I need to get back to health, I need to get back onto my feet, and most of all I NEED TO GET OUT OF HERE.

‘I’ll come down after my shift ends tonight’.

Four hours ago.

_Four. Fucking. Hours._

Nobody has been here. Not that I expected any visitors, other than him. I sent Liz Cutler a message telling her I was tired and suggesting she take the evening off and relax – go and watch a film or something. I know she works hard at her own duties and I know she gives up a lot of her free time to go through my physiotherapy exercises with me or give me a game of chess or talk about books or whatever else she thinks will lighten my admittedly usually rather crappy mood. And what with thinking I’d be talking to Tucker – I suppose that’s one way to describe what I’ve been expecting to take place – I reckoned her taking a night off duty was a good idea for everyone.

It’s probably just as well she’s not here, actually. I’m not one of life’s little charmers at the best of times, and with anxiety gnawing closer to the bone with every moment that passes, I’d be shockingly poor company. In addition to which, I’m not feeling very comfortable at the thought of encountering her right now, even if she was supposed to turn up and still felt like doing so (which she probably wouldn’t anyway).

Look. I know _All’s fair in love and war_ , and all that. And when it occurred to me that I could improve my powerless situation by grabbing a hostage, it seemed like a damn good idea at the time, however bad a one it eventually turned out to be. (For one thing, I was so sodding _bored_ of being good ... not that I expected it to win me any points with Commodore Tucker as long as I was giving him the silent treatment, but I really didn't perceive any advantage to reverting to my usual bastard behaviour). But though Tucker’s a legitimate target and there aren’t many sticks I wouldn’t poke him with if I got the chance, in hindsight dragging Cutler into it wasn’t a very nice thing to do in anyone’s terms. 

I hear myself thinking this and have to control the urge to guffaw. Since when the bloody hell have I worried about what was ‘nice’?

Grateful? Me? Get a life.

But for all that I scornfully remind myself that I’m only here because, once again, I can be _useful_ to somebody (only it’s Trip Tucker this time instead of Alpha), it wasn’t my _usefulness_ that accounted for Cutler’s tireless care of me back in the lab. Of course she had her orders and of course she didn’t dare deviate from them by one iota, but in my heart of hearts I know that there was a quality to her care of me that not one other person there showed. Most of them couldn’t have cared less that I was sentient, let alone that I was human; none of them gave the slightest sign of even recognising that I was suffering. As for regretting it if they had, well, don’t make me laugh.

Ok. I know. I’m the last person in the Empire who dares expect anyone else to care if I’m in pain. I used pain as a weapon against others and I bloody well enjoyed it, and if you want the truth I’d do it again in a heartbeat if that was what I had to do. And if anyone had the right to stand back and applaud as I was fed my own medicine in tablespoonfuls, Liz Cutler was that person.

But she didn’t.

Even when I was so utterly away with the fairies I didn’t even know who _I_ was – when I was doped so far past the eyeballs that I actually thought Phlox must be nice because he was a doctor – I knew she was The Nice One. I knew she wanted to protect me, I knew she was kind to me.

Now I wince when I remember how I treated her aboard _Enterprise_. I can’t even remember now why I did it; she was hardly a threat, she was more of an irritation than anything else. But whatever I did, she never resisted, never protested, never even tried to escape – not that I’d have let her if she had. When that young idiot Roberts had the nerve to take an interest in her, he had to go. Fast. It was just my good luck that his death happened to dovetail beautifully with a certain idea I’d had previously about disposing of a certain Commander Tucker who pissed me off every time I looked at him. I was royally cheesed off it didn’t work as well as I’d hoped, but it certainly left him the reminder of my affection.

 _Why_ , after the things I did to her – the way I treated her – does she give a flying fuck what happens to me? What is there in there that I couldn’t break, that could take everything I doled out and still lick my mouth afterwards?

And now, even having faced these questions among many others (like _what’s Tucker_ **_really_ ** _after?_ ) – not that I’m any closer to getting answers for any of them – I had to come out with that cruel gibe about her being ‘damaged goods’.

She must have been in the corridor outside by then; she came in within seconds after Tucker yelled for her. That almost certainly means she heard what I said.

As reluctant as I am to admit it even to myself, I’m not proud of that.

Just as I come to this dismal conclusion for about the fortieth time (my thoughts have been going round and round like bloody carousel horses, racing for their lives and getting absolutely nowhere), the door opens and Tucker finally shows his ugly face.

By this time I’ve decided he’s not going to show up at all, and is in fact sitting somewhere having a drink with his mates, and all of them having a damn good laugh at his having made a complete sodding idiot of that Reed guy. The combination of relief, anger and guilt is a combustible mixture, and the faint air movement from the door is enough to provide the necessary oxygen. My temper is more than enough to provide the spark.

“So much for ‘when your shift ended’ – sure you could spare the time?” I snarl at him.

Too late I realise that he hasn’t changed out of his uniform, and that he’s grubby and dishevelled from head to foot. Worse, his face is printed with exhaustion; he looks as if he’s crawled through every ventilation duct in the station.

Even if I was going to apologise – unlikely, on the whole – he doesn’t give me a chance. His own temper explodes, and as he strides forward it occurs to me with an odd frisson of mingled fear and satisfaction that he’s finally going to give me the hiding he’s been dying to from the start. At least if he does, that will be _honest._

But at the last minute, he catches himself back into control. His fists are clenched, and he actually has one of them drawn back, but he draws a deep breath and shakes his head.

“I’ll have you know, _General_ , I’ve been helpin’ put right what I had to put wrong to get you out of that mess you were in,” he says sarcastically. “We had a ship arrive with a load of casualties. One or two were in such a state they wouldn’t even have lasted till they got as far as Earth. We’ve got the _Livin'ston_ coupled up to the station to serve as our Sickbay until the new hospital we're buildin' is finished, which means we had to use her turbo lift to move patients from her secondary dockin' bay to the emergency bay. We didn't learn that the _Livin'ston's_ turbo lift wasn't designed for that kind of heavy use until the lift's motor overheated an' stopped between levels with a critically injured patient an' a team of medics on board. So I had to divert the entire shift from our salvage department to carry gurneys through the station from the nearest dockin' bay to the _Livin'ston_ while I took charge of extricatin' the stuck patient an' medics before startin' an emergency upgrade on the _Livin'ston's_ 'lift because, by all accounts, things are really heatin' up in the Andorian sector an' we can expect regular shipments of casualties for the next little while. Soon as I’m through here, I’ll be goin’ back up there to start over. So I’m real sorry I couldn’t get here sooner. I know you’re right out of the habit of bein’ kept waitin’.”

“I’ve been _kept waiting_ , as you call it, for well over a fucking year!” I hiss back at him. “Ever since that day when you had Phlox drop me, I’ve been waiting – waiting to be used for whatever the next bastard wants, waiting to be raped, waiting to be disembowelled, waiting for whatever, whoever, whenever! First them, and now you! You want to live as I’ve lived, then you preach fucking patience!”

“Yeah, so you got a little taste of what that poor bastard had to suffer that you finally sliced into ribbons!” he flings at me; I didn’t miss the way he paled with anger under the dirt at being ranked with Alpha and Em, but right now I’m too bitter to care how unjust the comparison may be. “Five years you made him wait, you said, five years, and he _did_ know what was coming to him! I bet he lived through it every night an’ every day till he was just prayin’ you’d get it over and done with!”

I’m appalled that he knows so much. What the hell else have I let slip? “Sallis was a traitor to the Empire,” I breathe. “He deserved everything he got.”

“Did he? _Did_ he? Or was he just made to pay for some stupid kid prank he–”

He gets no further. He should be thankful I’ve nothing to hand that even I could use as a weapon, because I swear to Lucifer I’d kill him. As it is, I can still move fast enough to smash my fist into his mouth before he has time to move.

Well, that’s it. All my fury can’t summon up power my muscles no longer have, and as I stagger backwards with one punch snapping my head hard to the right and the follow-up crashing into my ribs, time fractures and my brain disconnects.

I went down fighting, but I still went down. Ever since that day I’ve loathed the smell of frost-bitten earth and bruised grass. There were windflowers in it – they let the grass grow in among the trees in Nottingham Old Hall until they were over, so they’d naturalised over the years. Mother used to let them grow around the weeping cherry tree at the foot of the garden...

The pain explodes through my body. I bite my lip so I don’t scream. _Reeds don’t cry, Reeds don’t cry_ , but still the windflowers blur in my sight as I start biting the turf instead. The recording devices are running and I know this is going to be all over the school in an hour, the images of me held face down and helpless, spread-eagled on the cold ground.

Sallis is spread-eagled. I have coolant running through the table where they’ve tied him down, so he’ll feel the chill striking up through his belly, just as it did through mine, in those endless, terrible seconds while he waits for the horror to come.

And I make him wait. I make him wait longer than he made me wait. I add a few minutes to the five years, while I breathe in the smell of frost-bitten earth and bruised grass.

The cameras see my expression, hard and magisterial as the trial’s verdict and sentence are read out for the benefit of anyone who might not have known why this is happening. They don’t see the boiling hell waiting to be unleashed. I visited the condemned man in his cell the night he was brought in, and all the surveillance cameras were switched off. Believe me, he found out that night that I wasn’t a crying six-year-old any more, and I’ve had five years since then to refine my plans for the revenge I’d promised myself as each of them took their turn at me...

“Malcolm! _Malcolm!_ ”

_‘...You can’t run now, can you, Reedie?...’_

_‘...Hold the little bastard still, can’t you?...’_

“Malcolm!”

 _...first cut, base of the spine. Tap very, very gently into one of the branches of the_ **_cauda equina_** _, where the nerves fan out from the base of the spinal cord...._

_“Malcolm, you crazy little sonofabitch, talk to me!”_

... _the scalpel slips momentarily in my fingers and a woman screams... there are no women in here, just Sallis and me and the soft steady hush of the water in the drain that’ll collect the blood as it starts to run...._

I open my eyes and stare up dazedly into Tucker’s grubby, worried face. For a moment I simply can’t place it in any reasonable universe. “Fuck off!” I spit, because that sounds like a response that should cover pretty well any eventuality in the circumstances.

I can smell engine oil and earth and sandalwood and crushed grass. The scalpel sliced into my middle finger when I was distracted and I lift it, staring blankly at the unblemished skin where I can feel the cut stinging.

This is the exact moment when I realise I’ve gone mad. I’m not quite sure if it’s a relief or not but it explains a few things, and after all, a certain amount of leeway should be extended to a chap whose lovers raped him, impregnated him and turned him into a goldfish as part of the incubation process. I mean, it’s not nice.

There again, do mad people _know_ they’re mad? It’s a worrying thought. Knowing me, I might be pretending. I’m a sly little shit like that.

“You were late,” I say accusingly.

“I know. I’m sorry.”

Both of us look at each other for a bit. I suppose neither of us really knows what to say now.

He fetches some medi-wipes. I use one to clean up his cut lip (he winces, so it probably stings a bit) and he dabs one awkwardly at the place on my cheekbone where there’s probably an interesting discolouration already. We both look at the bruise on my ribcage and decide there’s nothing broken, though I say it hurts and hope he feels at least a little bit guilty.

He sits on the bed beside me and there’s another awkward pause.

“I’m goin’ to let you walk around most of this level of the station,” he says at last. “There’ll be a few restricted areas and I’ll give you a PADD showin’ where they are. And at least to start with, you’ll have guards with you, and they’ll let you know if they think you may be goin’ somewhere you shouldn’t.”

Well. Half of me is insulted and half of me applauds his very sensible foresight. It has to be admitted that I’m not feeling very stable in the brain department at the moment, so I wouldn’t put any money on which half is more reliable.

“Have them armed,” I advise. “Who’s your Head of Security?”

“Janice Crawley, but Austin Burnell has kept his offices here on the Station since the Empress promoted him to colonel and made him your Second in Command of the MACOs, and from what I understand they've worked it out that he'll be in charge of your personal security using people from her staff.”

I think for a bit. I’m pretty sure Burnell’s one of the Dispossessed, and he wouldn’t have been in charge of Jupiter Station, let alone promoted to interim head of the MACOs, if he wasn’t sound.

Probably sounder than I am right now, but we won’t go into that. “You reckon he’s up for the job?”

Tucker nods judiciously. “Done okay so far.”

“Then tell him to do better. ‘OK’ won’t cut it.” I think a bit more. “Who appointed him?”

“You did.”

That’s not good news at all. Well, it might be for me, because I wouldn’t have appointed him to such a vital post if I hadn’t been sure of his loyalty, but it probably isn’t for Tucker, because if this Burnell chap _is_ loyal to me then he’ll be in somebody’s sights already. The only problem is that getting him replaced by someone else might be even worse for both of us, because one whiff of me being here and temporarily incapacitated, and Jupiter Station will be the Number One target for half a dozen power hungry bastards wanting to get rid of me while they can. Knowing Tucker, he’ll try putting up resistance, and if he does, that could turn very nasty. If I was more self-sacrificing I’d tell him to just hand me over to the first to come knocking, but that would require much more nobility than I actually possess, so I wisely keep my mouth shut.

“Best leave things as they are for the time being.” I catch a sidelong blue glance. “And I promise not to interfere.”

Well, _I_ wouldn’t take a promise from me at face value, but it seems that Tucker does. And surprising and probably suicidal as it is, it’s also so oddly charming that I shelve nebulous thoughts of finding some way to find exactly which of us Burnell feels the most loyalty to, and how possible it would be to take advantage of it. After all, if I’m right, and he _is_ one of the Dispossessed…

At least, I shelve them for the moment.

There’s another bit of a pause.

“I want you to know something,” he says eventually. “I’m not gonna tell anyone about anything you said in here tonight.”

Well. It would be rather agreeable if I could remember actually _what_ I said, but I’ve a sickly feeling it included things that ordinarily I’d be flayed alive rather than mention to him. This ‘inning and outing’ lark is a pain in the arse, and I’d be obliged if my brain would stop doing it.

There are a few responses I could make to this. The automatic one would be to resolve silently that he has to die before he even gets the chance to _think_ about telling anyone, but I’ve already mentioned that as he’s saved my life, at some trouble and risk to himself, it wouldn’t be very grateful of me to kill him. Most of the alternatives would usually be along the lines of ‘If I ever find you’ve uttered one fucking word about it you’ll live long enough to see me use your small intestine as a skipping rope’, but somehow it doesn’t seem quite gracious to mention this.

“Thanks,” I mutter, after a certain amount of cogitation on the subject. Lucifer knows that’s not particularly gracious either, but I’m not the Empire’s greatest expert on gratitude. 

I shoot him a suspicious glance. He’s probably gained some damned personal information about me and he’d better not be grinning – or, worse still, looking pitying. Fortunately for him he just looks thoughtful, to which even I can hardly take reasonable objection.

“Fancy somethin’ to eat?” he asks.

It’s probably not surprising that I hadn’t felt particularly hungry before – anxiety always destroys my appetite – but now he mentions it, I could murder a good solid dinner. At my nod, he steps to the comm. and orders some sandwiches brought down. Sandwiches weren’t exactly what I’d been thinking of, but when the food finally arrives even I can’t complain at the quality or the quantity. Granary bread, filled with thick slices of carved ham topped with lashings of mature grated cheese, and with sides of dressed salad and vegetable crisps; just the smell of it makes my mouth water. It’s not until I’m about halfway through mine that it occurs to me that this is a very unusually British combination, and I wonder how often he would ordinarily eat this kind of thing rather than something more exotic.

I’m amazed by how relaxed I feel as the two of us start eating, with my bedside table pulled into place to serve the two of us. As he’s going back to work he obviously can’t have a beer yet, so I join him in drinking apple juice, which is cold and tart, offsetting the richness of the cheese. We don’t talk much, but the silence feels surprisingly companionable.

Perhaps it’s that which impels me to suggest, as we finish the last few mouthfuls, that if there’s any small work I could help out with to get the repairs done any faster, I’d be glad to lend a hand.

The look he gives me makes me feel ridiculously pleased with myself, like a bloody puppy which has finally mastered the command ‘fetch’. But I’ve offered, and I don’t take it back, though I remind myself not to wag my tail as he says he’s sure there will be something needing doing and he’d be really grateful (actually he says ‘real grateful’, but that’s by the bye). Admittedly it’s been a while since I got my hands dirty on any actual engineering work, but I reckon I can remember enough to make myself reasonably useful.

“I’ll get Burnell to bring somethin’ down for you to work on,'' he continues. “An’ any tools you’ll need of course.”

His gaze is completely guileless. You wouldn’t think that he knows just as well as I do that he’s going to present me with an opportunity to speak privately with the man best positioned to help me exact my revenge on him, whom I personally appointed as Head of Security for this station when I was one of the Triad, and who might just feel more loyalty for me than for the Empire's _de facto_ Chief Engineer. Nor that if anyone on this station knows _exactly_ what can be done with tools other than their proper functions, that person is me.

I eat the last few crumbs of cheese thoughtfully.


	13. 61-65

**Chapter Sixty-One**

**An Ask Too Far**

_ Commodore Charles Tucker III _

After pulling my third double shift in as many days, I head for the mess hall for some chow. I've sent T'Pol my apologies (and wouldn’t  _ that _ raise some eyebrows, the commanding officer of Jupiter Station apologizing to his sex slave!) that she'd be dining alone and explained (again, explaining myself to her would also get some curious attention, not that dining with her  _ wouldn't)  _ that I was just too busy tonight to take an hour for a proper meal. The crew charged with upgrading patient transport systems from the  _ Livingston  _ to what will be Jupiter Station Memorial discovered a laundry list of other issues while they were working, from power generation to inertial dampening, which required a lot more of my time and attention than anyone had anticipated. After touring the ship, I had to pull teams to complete the projects from our other operations, review and approve their plans, authorize requisitions and overtime, and inspect and approve the work when it was done. As the San Francisco Fleet Yards have been building all our hospital ships for more than a decade now, I don't have many engineers who are familiar, let alone proficient, with their special systems and equipment, so the work has required more than the usual amount of oversight from me. It's been a learning experience for us all, and though I've been in almost constant communication with Commander Riley in San Fran, I've only barely managed to stay a step ahead of my people. 

While I’m eating I start catching up with all the reports that have automatically been uploaded to my PADD. Reed's little crisis, the load of casualties, and the resulting lift emergency on the  _ Livingston _ may have disrupted  _ my  _ schedule for a couple of days, but the routine work of the station goes on regardless, and for all that I’ve complete trust in my two seconds, Mike and Anna, it’s a poor leader who doesn’t keep a personal eye on everything that goes on under his command. I may trust them to do their jobs and they’ve never failed me yet, but that doesn’t mean I don’t need to know what’s what around the place. Ultimately I’m in charge of all the tiny individual threads that make up the tapestry of life on Jupiter Station, and I’m best placed to spot first if some irregularity or other threatens to pull the whole damn thing out of shape. A tiny problem, left unaddressed, can soon spawn twenty others and grow with frightening speed, ending up as something that could threaten the station itself – just like that damn refrigeration unit in Sickbay could eventually have done if I hadn’t preempted matters by organizing the place to be blown to hell along with the blue-eyed son of a bitch who undoubtedly belonged there.

When my dinner's finished, I message Mike and Anna asking them to meet me in Anna's office ASAP. It seems we always meet in my office or, when it's early in the evening and the command center's too busy for a quiet, unnoticed get-together, Anna's, never Mike's. He has the same security clearance as Anna, but since salvage deals with decommissioning older ships and sorting 'junk' from 'parts' he has no reason to ever close his door and enact his security protocols, so a secret meeting in his office with the station commander and the Head of New Construction would likely attract some attention. As Head of New Construction, Anna is always reviewing plans for prototypes and new technologies as well as being responsible for evaluating newly discovered vulnerabilities in our current models and designing the means to overcome them before they become common knowledge. It's widely known that she and Mike are good friends, so naturally she would value his opinion; and as a result, no one is likely to look twice when she enacts her security protocols and has a closed-door meeting with us in her office.

After the talking-to Anna gave me when I first told them I had settled Reed in the bunker, I learned my lesson about keeping them in the loop. Until the other day there wasn't much to tell them except that he was still alive and getting stronger. I didn't want to give them too many details, because once they realized how many people were getting involved in my conspiracy and just how close I was with most of them, they'd probably decide I really had lost my ever-loving mind,  _ but _ I did have sense enough to warn them that I was bringing him back to the station before I actually went and did it. 

So, at least I am able to start this time without having to justify how and why I'd brought a rabid dog back into our midst.

"So, how good is the rumor mill?" I ask. "Do you know why we're here?"

Naturally, Anna is the one to confront me. Her tone is partway between resigned and accusing. "Well, what did he do?"

Considering that, more than twenty-four hours later, they don't already know tells me we did a decent job keeping a lid on Malcolm's meltdown, and therefore contained the fact that he’s present on the station. Of course, if any of the MACOs who  _ were _ there have ambitions that might benefit from reporting his presence to one of his enemies it wouldn't necessarily hit the station grapevine, and we could still be in for a bit of a rough time soon.

I shake my head, then. Just having that little bastard on my station is giving me enough paranoia for ten men, and I don't suppose logging forty-eight of the past seventy-two hours on the clock has helped matters any. Three of the four MACOs in question are assigned to my personal detail; if they had any inclination to screw me over, they've had  _ countless _ better opportunities to do it, pretty much every single day in the few months since Reed was delivered to the Bunker. Being Reed's second in command, if Burnell had any interest in making some hay while his boss is out of commission, he'd just order the MACOs to take over directly, and he's had plenty of time to do that. Now that he knows the extent of Malcolm's condition, though, it might be a good idea to take Austin's temperature about the state of things sooner rather than later; he's not one to act rashly, but if he's getting his ducks in a row for a major move, I need to know. He's a loyal soldier, I'm sure, but loyal to whom? The only real wild card is Allie; all she could do is talk about what happened, which is dangerous enough, and I'm sure Liz has her well under control.

"Let me start by tellin' you no one was seriously injured," I say.

"But someone  _ was  _ injured?" Mike clarifies, gesturing toward my bruised cheek.

"Actually, that happened later," I tell him. "But Little Allie Nash got scratched up a bit.” 

"And scared shitless, I'll bet," Anna assumes, and I'd like to say it was one of those things that sounds worse than it really was, but the truth is, it  _ was _ every bit as bad as it sounds, and probably worse.

"Yeah, I suppose she found it traumatic," I agree, "but she's back to work already."

"That doesn't mean she's ok, Chief," Anna insists, scowling.

"I know, an' Doctor Lucas is followin' up with all the appropriate care," I assure her.

"Care she wouldn't have needed if you'd just let the little fucker die," she grumbles. 

Things get contentious whenever we talk about Reed. It's unlike Anna to keep harping on something once a decision is made – she'll give her opinion, quite frankly, too, and generally not waiting to be asked – but once I've made up my mind about something, she usually shuts her mouth and follows orders. But, since this isn't 'official' business, maybe it's different, and also, since it's Reed, there are likely special circumstances to consider. So, I've been giving her a lot of leeway, but tonight, it's late and I'm tired.

"Goddamnit, Anna! I get that you're opposed to anything I try to do that doesn't culminate in a very unpleasant an' untidy death for General Reed. I don't know why you hate him so much, an' I don't need to know. Just about everybody in the Empire has a reason, an' I trust that yours is as valid as anyone's; but do you think I could maybe get through two sentences in a row about him without you interruptin' me to express your displeasure every time I pause for a breath?"

How she manages to smirk and look contrite all at the same time I'll never know, but she does, and she says, "I think you just did, Chief, and I'll try to do better, but you might have to remind me from time to time."

Something in her eyes tells me she's really doing her best to support me, and that I'm also asking almost too much of her.

"I'll do, that, Anna, but if there's a hard line here, I need you to tell me before I cross it so that I'm not countin' on you for something only to find out you can't do it."

She sighs. "If he was on fire, not only would I  _ not _ piss on him to put it out, but I'd more likely pour alcohol on him to fuel the flames. He's the only person I've ever met for whom I've made plans about how I'd kill him if I ever got the chance. I can cover for you, and I can keep my mouth shut. Beyond that, you can ask me, but don't count on anything."

"All right," I agree as Mike just looks shocked. It appears he's never seen Anna like this, either. "I guess I'll just tell you what I need, an' we'll see what happens."

"Fair enough."

"Well, the incident with Allie the other day made it apparent that the general is spendin' too much time alone inside his own head," I say, knowing that the next thing I say is going to get a reaction. "He needs company. He's like a feral dog that needs tamin'. He needs to learn how to act around people without just deliberately scarin' the shit out of them."

"Ohhh,  _ fuck no _ , Chief!" Anna explodes, and frankly I'm surprised she let me say as much as I did. "I just got through telling you I made plans to kill this bastard if I ever get the opportunity and you're asking me to make  _ friends _ with him? Well,  _ fuck  _ you! And  _ fuck _ him! You can  _ both _ go right straight to hell!"

" _ Anna! _ " Rostov's shock is plain on his face, but I ignore him for the moment. I'm a little surprised she didn't hit me, but that doesn’t mean I can let her get away with insubordination like this. I rocked Liz back on her heels when she needed it, and I’ll do the same to Anna if necessary.

"Commander Hess!" I bark. "I need you to take a breath an' get a grip. I'm not orderin' you to do anything you don't want to do. I'm not even askin'. We just agreed I could tell you what I need an' then see what happens!"

Normally this would jerk her back to reality, but she’s too far gone to heed the warning. "This  _ is _ what happens, Chief, when you ask me to make friends with a fucking little horn dog jackal like Reed!" she snarls. "So now you know!"

"What the  _ hell _ did he do to you?" Rostov finally bursts forth. I guess, since they've always been pretty much equals, he's never thought of Hess as vulnerable before and the very idea that Major Malignancy could have dared to give her any kind of shit is just rocking his world a little.

The glare she gives him would burn a hole in the deck plating, though her eyes are suddenly filling up. "I was a woman on  _ Enterprise _ , isn't that enough?"

"Now, Anna, if he only ..."

"Michael! Leave it." I'm firm to the point of sounding harsh, and it's deliberate. Rostov is a much, much better man than me in a lot of ways. The only reason I don't tell him so is that I don't believe he's capable of hearing it. His loyalty and trust in me are so strong that he honestly can't see my flaws when they are pointed out to him. He, more than anybody else, worries me that someday, I'm going to get him killed. I doubt he's ever used a willing woman without regard to her comfort and pleasure, let alone raped and beaten a defenseless subordinate just because his rank and physical superiority gave him the ability to do so and get away with it. The look he gives me when I snap at him is bewildered and hurt, and I feel like a man who’s kicked his own dog. I'll apologize later, but right now, Anna is my concern.

Hess never complains, and she never, ever cries. The fact that she is doing both right now has kind of shaken me.

"It doesn't matter  _ what _ Reed did," I say. "The important thing is how she feels about it and about him."

I reach out and take her hand. I think it's the first time I've ever done so, and she startles for a moment before wrapping both of her hands around mine and holding on tight. I cover her hands with my free one.

"Look me in the eye, darlin'."

It's a slow minute before she meets my gaze, but when she does, I give her my most understanding smile.

"It's all right for you to hate him, darlin', they're your feelin's an' you have every right to have them, you got that?"

She nods.

"But I need to know, if, somewhere down the line, weeks or months from now, he were to come into your department on a tour of the station or just in the course of some daily activity, could you be professional with him?"

She gives me a confused look, then glances at Rostov as if to ask if she's hearing me right before looking back at me as if my ears had suddenly grown points and I'd started speaking Vulcan.

"You ask that like it's a  _ decision _ I have to make every time someone walks into the construction bay," she says. "You make it sound like a  _ mood.  _ It's not how I feel, though, it's what I  _ am _ . I can do my damned job, Chief. I can  _ be  _ professional with  _ anybody _ , Chief, because I  _ am _ a professional. I'll even be polite, in the course of my duties."

"Even with him?" I ask.

"Didn't I just say, with  _ anybody _ ?"

I could almost laugh aloud with relief, but I resist the impulse. Hess's reactions this evening have been way out of line with her usual responses to my crazy ideas. Reed is definitely a sore spot with her, and I don't want to do anything to upset her more. But…

"There is one more thing I could use some help with," I tell her, gently disentangling our hands as I sit back to where I can include Rostov in the conversation again. "Of course, you're both free to say no, but," I shoot Anna a wink, "I'd be grateful if you did it without tellin' me to go fuck myself."

She rolls her eyes, and I know we're ok again.

"So, like I said, Reed needs socializin'…"

"Like a feral dog," Rostov supplies.

"Yeah, exactly, which is why I can't let him wander about the station just yet."

"Then how do you expect him to socialize?" Mike asks.

"Actually, that's what I need help with. Not that you'd have to do it yourselves," I hasten to add, for Anna's benefit, and she inclines her head and smiles. "But I need ideas, suggestions, ways I can get him interactin' with people in a controlled environment, things to keep him busy."

"You know, Salvage is starting to refurbish parts ahead of the refitting program," Rostov suggests. "I have a hundred shuttle transmissions in storage waiting for reassembly with new parts. I was going to put a couple of guys on that the other day, but then you pulled them all to fetch gurneys, which set us behind on our regular work, so I couldn't have them start the trannies until we were caught up with our salvage schedule."

"Well, I'm so sorry for upsettin’ your schedule,” I apologize jokingly, "but it seems to have worked out for us after all. I think that would be a good job for Reed. Something he can do in the privacy of a VIP suite, without havin' to bother anybody, an' he can just take a break whenever he gets tired an' go back to it whenever he gets bored."

"After the first couple are finished, I don't know that it'll do much for his boredom," Mike laughs, "but it would sure help  _ us _ out a lot. Give me a couple of days, and I can pull the parts and convert one of the empty conference rooms on that level into a workshop for him."

"That would be great, Michael, but we still need somethin' to get him workin'  _ with _ people," I realize. "We'll give him the transmission work, but can y'all think of anything else? Something that requires a second person?"

The two of them look at each other and shrug in unison so that it almost looks like a choreographed move. Then Anna speaks.

"He's been out of the loop, what? Eighteen months?"

I nod. "Give or take."

"Well, there's been a lot of technical advancement in the past year and a half," she reminds me. "I mean, yeah, the new  _ Daedalus _ class is the big thing, sure, but her shuttles are next-gen tech, too. Even some of the hand-held tools and weapons are new. And the hospital is going to have the newest…well, everything."

"I could probably take a couple of weeks to bring him up to speed just on the  _ Daedalus _ class," Mike offers. "Maybe whoever's responsible for his care can build an hour a day into the schedule for me to meet with him after my shift. That would give us time to think of other stuff he could do."

"I'll send you a PADD with all the specs," Anna says to him. "Including the top secret stuff we don't have out on the Station mainframe yet."

I can't help grinning now. I am so damned proud of these two. "That sounds good," I agree. "Meanwhile, I'll talk to his care team about other ideas an' see what we come up with."

"His care team," Anna echoes. "Most of the time, that's Liz Cutler, isn't it?"

"An' a few other people,” I nod. Seeing their looks, I shake my head; I already know what they’re going to say. "Trust me, if it was my decision, I’d keep Liz light years away from him, but she wants to be there. She says she loves him, an' I'm startin' to think she does."

"Some people love peanut butter," Anna says darkly, "but it puts them into an anaphylactic crisis."

"Well, what you're talkin' about is Stockholm Syndrome, an' I've asked a couple different doctors about that. They concur that takin' his care out of her hands right now would do them  _ both _ more harm than good.

"Michael, I'll tell Liz to get in touch with you about meetin' with Reed. You said an hour a day?"

He nods, and I turn to Hess. "Anna, I'm grateful for any help you can give me, even if I don't always seem to appreciate your advice."

She grins and tells me, "You don't have to be polite, Chief, I know it was a lot more harassment than just advice. I think I was just afraid you were going to ask me to do something I couldn't, and I was afraid of letting you down."

"No, Anna, you could never let me down." I look at Rostov, too, now, and add, "Neither one of you."

Our meeting over, we go our separate ways. I drop by Amanda Cole's quarters on my way back to my own but I don't accept the invitation to enter. For one thing, I don't want to give any of the other MACOs in the corridor anything to talk about. Since I took over Jupiter Station I haven't indulged with anyone under my command other than Liz Cutler, but I still have a reputation dating all the way back to my pre- _ Enterprise _ days and the moment I cross her threshold Cole will be tainted by it. For another thing T'Pol will probably smell her on me just from standing in the doorway and get in a snit over it. If I go into her quarters – where a woman as lovely as she is will undoubtedly have entertained guests from time to time – and soak up not only the scent of her person, but that of her  _ sex,  _ I'll have to requisition another new uniform from the quartermaster. And all of that's really just way too much grief and hassle for a case of Beans.

* * *

**Chapter Sixty-Two**

**Advance, Friend, and be Recognised**

_ General Malcolm Reed _

Well, this could be interesting.

I’ve put off the reckoning as long as I can without making it appear that I’m frightened of the meeting to come. It's bad enough I had to solicit Tucker's permission to summon Burnell to my quarters before there was work ready to deliver to me, but seeming _fearful_ of him, being _vulnerable_ before him – that would be the worst move I could make, putting me on the defensive even before it starts. 

Technically, he  _ is _ my second in command now, and under normal circumstances no one with even a whisper of good sense would question my wanting to meet with him daily or more often. That same sensible person, however, upon seeing how little command authority I actually possess at the moment, would probably wonder why my SiC would bother to come when I call. I suppose I can trust Tucker not to have disclosed exactly how effectively he has hobbled me, if only because he's not as intimate with Burnell as he is with his pet MACOs down in the bunker and can't risk me, his marionette, having my strings cut and being supplanted by a Real Boy, with a mind and a will of his own who is actually free to exercise them. 

Still, as long as the commodore keeps propping me up, I may be hobbled but I am not tethered like a goat staked out in the woods as bait for a tiger. I can continue to comport myself as the Chief of Imperial Security, the Head of the MACOs and the Alpha to the Pack of the Dispossessed. But even with the grand titles still appended to my name, I have enough knowledge of Burnell to have a very healthy respect for his abilities, even if he weren’t Pack. 

But he _is_ Pack; I remembered that in the middle of the night after my squabble with Tucker over his delay in coming to see me when his shift was over when I woke from a fevered dream with a raging erection and a head full of half-formed memories of a beautiful young MACO who was more than happy to show me his gratitude for gifting him with the truth of how he came to feel so distant from all the humans around him. Whatever my current physiological responses to arousal may be – after that particularly vivid dream, it was a quick sprint to the bathroom to vomit followed by a cold shower because I simply couldn't bear the idea of wanking – _back then_ , what followed not only afforded us both immense physical pleasure, but also affirmed his status and removed his sense of appalling isolation as he faced the horror of what had been done to him to make him feel that way. As it stands, here and now, he’s younger, fitter and physically stronger than I am. If we fight, he will win.

_ If  _ we fight. 

Pack wants Power. I have it; he wants it. Or at least, I have it, officially; he has less of it,  _ technically _ . 

As Head of Station Security he was a long way from being able to move against me, however ill I was. But his being made my SiC has increased his power exponentially, and with it his danger to me. As things stand, and especially now he’s seen how the situation has changed so dramatically in his favour, he’s about the biggest damn danger possible – and he knows that just as well as I do.

Strangely enough, I’m still not trusted with knives, except the small disposable ones I’m brought with my meals, and they check to see those are on the tray collected when I’ve finished. I won’t deny that right now I’d feel a lot happier with a knife – I spare a nostalgic pang for the little hand-carved ivory one that I used to keep slipped down in a sheath built into the lining of my right boot, and idly wonder where  _ that  _ ended up. But I rather doubt that any knife short of a  _ D’k tahg  _ would give Burnell serious pause; maybe if he came in and found me brandishing a  _ bat’leth  _ in his general direction that might stop him in his tracks, but inconvenient as it undoubtedly is, I don’t happen to have one on me today.

So.

I will not be standing when he enters. I will be seated, as befits his alpha. And I will wait to see how he behaves when he finds what there is to find.

The chime sounds, and I make a final tiny adjustment to my posture. My face is already fixed into its mask.

I press the ‘admit’ button on the table beside me, and return my hand to its quiet placement on my thigh. There is not a tense muscle in my body, because he would immediately perceive it, but that does not mean that every one of them is not ready to spring into action in the fight for my life.

He enters, and time rolls back. How long it seems since he was a fresh-faced MACO corporal, standing stiffly to attention in front of my desk; and almost as long since we shared a bed. He was a talented soldier and an apt pupil, and from his rapid progress up the ranks that never changed. Now he’s experienced in command, and formidable; and fully deserving of his recent promotion to colonel, even if he did skip over a few other bright-eyed little stoats who might have expected to ascend ahead of him. He comes to a halt at parade rest in front of me, a faint frown between his brows as he takes in the changes that time and The Project have wrought in me.

He doesn’t immediately attack, though I’m not sure what makes him hesitate. Despite my surprise (and, I’ll admit, relief), I feel a wave of pleased acknowledgement. There’s not the slightest doubt that he feels the instinct to launch himself at me, but he’s not a slave to his instincts; he controls them rather than vice versa. This is a characteristic of the best Pack officers, and reinforces my respect for him. He may well still attack me and will almost certainly kill me if he does, but I still know that I was right to advance him to where he could be christened my right hand when it was needed.

“General,” he says stiffly.

“Colonel.” I don’t have to stand, but I do, without hurry. This brings us almost eye to eye – he’s a bit taller than me, and strongly muscled, but I allow none of my awareness of that to show in my demeanour. I hold his gaze, projecting all I can remember and summon of cold confidence in my authority.

We’re almost breast to breast. He should tilt his head to the side, submitting to my dominance, but he doesn’t. He knows he has the physical advantage.

_ I’m  _ certainly not going to submit. A long time ago I decreed that Pack power fights had to end in death, and he would not accept my surrender. However fallen away I may be, I won’t die yowling on my back.

We stand facing one another. Our breathing is slow and even. He holds my stare with commendable calm, refusing to be intimidated, waiting for me to launch the attack that his failure to defer should earn.

But I don’t want to attack him. Not just because I won’t win, but because Jupiter Station is the most important shipbuilding and repair centre in the Empire. I want someone good to be in charge – I want someone I  _ trust _ in charge – because otherwise it’s going to be a magnet for its own ugly and potentially devastating battle for power. For all that Janice Crowley is now in charge of internal security for Jupiter Station, as long as Burnell keeps his offices here the SiC of Imperial Security will undoubtedly take command if there is any external threat against the station. If something happens to Tucker, Burnell is strong enough to hold the fort, and the Empire’s very existence may depend on the speed and quality of ship production and repair. But if we end up fighting then I’ll do my damnedest to inflict as much damage on him as I possibly can, regardless of the welfare of either station or empire; there’ll be no leisure then to think of anything other than kill or be killed.

His victory (for victory we both know it will be) will be costly. If I’ve not forgotten all my old skills, possibly  _ very  _ costly.

“Before we fight – we talk.” I keep my voice flat and controlled, but leave no doubt that I am giving him an order.

Until the fighting actually starts, I am his alpha. He must either obey me or attack me.

“Yes, sir.” His reply in turn is carefully neutral.

I hold my ground, and point to the second chair. It feels like a very long time before he turns and paces to it, and with a glance at me, seats himself in it.

Only when he is sitting, and apparently intending to remain there, do I return to my own chair, where I steeple my fingers and stare at him over them.

“You probably realise that a great deal has happened to me since we last met, that hasn’t been made public knowledge.”

“Yes, sir,” he says again, without apparent irony.

“So, by rights, you should have attempted to kill me as soon as you summed up the situation. I would like to know why you did not.”

He frowns down at his joined hands. “Primarily, sir, because of something Commodore Tucker said – when the news was first released that you’d survived the explosion.” Seeing my raised eyebrows, he elaborates, “He made the announcement during the morning briefing. He impressed upon us all that your survival was vital to the stability of the Empire – that in the current situation we could not afford a civil war.”

I absorb that statement. “Very noble, Burnell, but I’m sure you haven’t forgotten that in the unlikely event you managed to kill me, you’d automatically take my power. You’d be accepted by the Dispossessed on that basis.”

“By the Dispossessed loyal to you, yes. But gaining control of the MACOs might be a more protracted process, and the intervening period of instability might provide an opportunity for anyone on the lookout for any sign of one.”

‘Loyal to me’?  _ All  _ the Dispossessed are loyal to me. I made sure of that. Still, the faint emphasis he put on the phrase tells me he used it quite deliberately, and I didn’t miss the fractional intensifying of his stare that went with it.

I lean back in my chair. “The Dispossessed are mine, until or unless I’m deposed,” I say coldly. “Every last one of them.”

“Are you certain of that, sir?” 

“Explain.”

He looks at me for the space of several breaths. “When you first recruited me, sir, you told me that the process of creating the Dispossessed had been ended for good. Apparently that was not the case. The programme continued, and for all I know it’s still going on.”

_ –What? _

For all the years of hiding behind the mask, I can’t completely conceal my incredulity. He makes a note of it.

“I spoke with a relatively recent trainee, shortly after the ‘accident’ in sickbay,” he continues evenly. “She was recruited by Generals Hayes and Gomez. You, admittedly, were not present.”

I hold his now nakedly accusing stare, while my mind races frantically and my heart plunges in my chest. I remember Alpha, I remember confiding in him, I remember his horror at the systematic abuse of talented MACOs on Wolfplanet Mindfuck. I remember him caressing me and assuring me that there would be no more, but that those who had shared my suffering would be special to both of us.

_ Both of us.  _ Sweet Lucifer.  _ Both of us. _

I think he must have known all along. I think he must have been playing me from square one. He realised how useful I could be – how very bloody, naively, _stupidly_ _useful –_ as he was watching me track him, and through him Harris, down. I'm thinking Alpha was as much reptilian as he was lupine...utterly cold-blooded. I suspect he led me on for a good long while, encouraged me to track down every single one of the Dispossessed, each of whom was as horrified and humiliated by what had been done to them as I was, and let me promise them that Alpha and I had put a stop to it. Maybe I made it easy by projecting my feelings about what happened on Wolfplanet Mindfuck onto him, choosing to believe that we were on the same wavelength. Meanwhile, he happily encouraged my delusion on the one hand, and carried on producing elite MACOs on the other. It tears me asunder to think how he perceived me: a fool in love with someone who detected my most dangerous 'flaw' of wanting to believe, to be loyal, to follow and trust. After all, nobody involved was going to risk Alpha's wrath by telling me the truth, were they? 

Not even Em. Lord God, not even Em….

And now I understand Burnell’s dilemma perfectly. Either I have been deceived, and am therefore a gullible fool, or I am a liar. His opinion of me will fall much,  _ much _ lower if he believes me a fool than if he believes I’ve merely broken a promise; though I’ve always done my utmost to be honest with my subordinates, in the Empire a promise is to be kept only until or unless it’s inconvenient.

“My congratulations,” I drawl. “It was my understanding that the second tier were to remain completely under the radar.”

“So you knew of their existence?”

“Of course.”

“Forgive me, sir, but you seemed surprised when I mentioned them.”

“I was surprised that you knew of them. It seems that with the demise of General Hayes and General Gomez, standards have slipped slightly. Carelessness has crept in.” I inject menace into my tone. “I will have to take steps to remedy that.”

“Then it’s to be inferred that your period of ‘mourning’ is over, sir.”

“My period of ‘inactivity’ is certainly over.” I bare my teeth just slightly. “Obviously, for a while I will need to remain operational from behind the scenes, but I’m informed my prognosis is excellent. I assure you, those who need reminding who is in control will get those reminders.”

He’s good. I have no idea whether he buys my explanation or not.

“Sir, may I ask you something?”

A haughty eyebrow. “Certainly. No answer guaranteed.”

A pause. “Commodore Tucker informed us that you had been on the station at the time of the explosion in Sickbay, and I observed no tells that he was being other than truthful in that statement. However, I’ve been watching your broadcasts over the past few years, and I perceive a difference – an  _ irreconcilable _ difference – between your physical state now and the person I saw in the last broadcast. You say your prognosis is excellent, which implies that you are still under medical supervision and therefore, by extension, that your condition has improved over time. I extrapolate from that there has been an occasion when your physical state was poorer than it is now – possibly  _ considerably  _ poorer – and I would like to know how and when that came about.”

Cancel that, he’s  _ very  _ good.

“That’s classified information,” I say curtly.

He nods. I haven’t denied it, which is as good as an admission that he’s right. I’m certainly not going to give him the gory details.

“So. Unless you require any additional information, it seems there is a decision to be made. Do you die, or do you submit?”

Only a fool would respond immediately. I wait, unmoving, while he takes time to consider. All the time his eyes never leave my face, although I’m exquisitely aware that he’s conscious of my less-than-stellar physical condition. Youth is on his side, strength is on his side; all I have is the years of command, of skill and cunning and ruthlessness.

“It would appear, sir, that for the present – I submit.”

_ For the present  _ is a delightfully vague term, conveying (exactly as he intends) precisely nothing. It could end at some point during the next five seconds, or extend for the next five years. Despite the very clear and present danger he presents to me, I can't help feeling just a touch of something like paternal pride.

“I applaud your decision, Colonel – as well as your phraseology.”

“I’m glad you approve, General.” He inclines his head ever so slightly and allows himself the smallest of gratified smiles. It seems, whatever he thinks of my present condition, he still holds enough respect for me to value my good opinion.

I’m not nearly naïve enough to trust in his harmlessness as we both stand. By the time we’re facing one another again,  _ for the present  _ may have become  _ right up till this instant. _

Once again we’re (almost) eye to eye, and smelling each other’s breath, with the undertone of aftershave; each braced to react instantly to a murderous lunge. Then, after a long, tense pause, he bends his neck, turning his head to the side.

I have to acknowledge that there has been something perilously close to a challenge. So I deliver a sharp nip of reproof to the base of his neck, but I follow it up with a lick to indicate he has been forgiven – this time. He accepts both, and then turns to lick lightly at my chin and then my mouth. Though we do not hug, I enjoy a few moments of gentle body-pressure while we renew our bonds with more playful nips and licks. If the circumstances were different it might well have culminated in sex, but as it is, I enjoy the sensuality of it for what it is.

Not until the door closes behind him, however, do I allow myself to relax. Austin Burnell is a clever and a dangerous man, and I have had a very narrow escape. Fortunately for me, he is also a very intelligent man; whether he believed my impromptu lie I don’t know, but I’m guessing that he accepted the necessity to preserve the Empire’s  _ status quo.  _ For how long that acceptance will hold probably depends on the shape into which the situation finally falls. Like the brilliant strategist he is, he’s left me in position, his weakened stalking horse – if I fail, I fall, and leave him to succeed me without the punishing battle that a direct confrontation would involve. 

I can only applaud his tactics.

* * *

**Chapter Sixty-Three**

**Privileges**

_ General Malcolm Reed _

Had I known the results it would achieve, I would have taken a hostage the day Commodore Tucker returned me to the station. In the week or so since then, I have been gifted a PADD that receives every news and entertainment broadcast from Earth, is pre-set and locked to three different two-way transmission frequencies, and has several terabytes of storage if I want to download books, films, or music as well as a word processing function for the journaling Ginny has recommended (and I have so far refused to do, as it is meant to explore my emotions rather than record the events of my day); my personal space has been expanded to include a workshop, an exercise room, and an observation lounge on the same corridor as my quarters; two names have been added to my list of visitors who can drop in without pre-approval from Commodore Tucker; I have been given work to do; and I have been granted company. 

When he handed me the PADD, the commodore made it abundantly clear that any attempt to alter its functions would result in an automatic shutdown and lock out that would require me first to explain to him what I had done and why, then to regain his trust, and finally, to ask him 'real nice' to please unlock it so I could use it again. As condescending as it might seem, I understand what he is doing with this device, and I appreciate that it's the best he  _ can _ do under the circumstances. I can use it as often and as freely as I want, within the parameters he's set for me, and if I try to push beyond those limits, I'll be the initiator of my own humiliation. He'd be a fool to trust me with anything more, and he's not a fool. And frankly, if I were the type to sit still looking at a screen all day, this one PADD could provide me with enough entertainment to last me the rest of my life. Adding the two-way transmission channels so I can speak to my parents, Maddie and Ginny, was such a thoughtful gesture that I really didn't quite know how to thank him. I've called my parents once, Maddie twice – because she didn't take the first call – and, for reasons surpassing even my own understanding, I've spoken to Ginny for at least a few minutes every day.

The observation lounge is just a pleasant, relaxing place to be. I can turn out the lights and stare at the stars and remember the wonder I used to feel before my conditioning and the power and position I attained squashed it all out of me, turning the stars into just so many markers for battles and campaigns, wars to wage and worlds to conquer. The exercise room is used exclusively for my physiotherapy, which, at six to seven hours a day as my improving stamina permits, is becoming almost a full time job. My morning rest period had gone by the wayside well before any plans were made to bring me back to Jupiter Station, but I still succumb to the need for an afternoon break several days a week. Now that I understand the physiology of tissue repair during sleep, I don't resent it anymore, and when I feel sufficiently fatigued, I strip to my undergarments and climb into bed.

The workshop is, naturally, used for the work Commodore Tucker sends me. In the past I would have considered the menial tasks he gives me condescending, but of late I don't feel that way so much anymore. The work is like the stars. Now that I don't have the pressures and demands of my work buzzing in my head all the time, it means more – or at least something different. Instead of being so many pieces of inventory that any raw recruit could slap together, each transmission or circuit board or whatever component I am given to assemble on any particular day will become part of a ship or weapon or tool that someone will use in action at some point. But it matters to me, more than I would have imagined, to be able to contribute with my own two hands (even in my pitifully reduced state) to the defence of the Empire that I’ve served faithfully for my entire adult life. This feels like something else for which I should thank the commodore, but as I can barely formulate it even to myself I would have no idea how to begin thanking him. Nor, to be truthful, any idea how I’d go about it without making myself look feeble.  _ Thanking _ him for allowing me to stick parts together for a waste recycler? Lucifer, he really would see how the mighty have fallen.

Colonel Burnell has dropped in two or three times since the hostage incident. I wonder that the remote health sensors in the room don't set off a slew of alarms that bring Liz and Doctor Lucas on the run each time he shows up and I have to wait and see whether he will submit or challenge me, but once the fateful moment has passed – with him submitting, obviously, for I'm sure I would be dead if he didn't – he brings me up to speed on various happenings around the Empire. I don't know if he's aware of the spoofing program Commodore Tucker uses to deliver orders from behind a mask of my face, but he's been too circumspect to ask about the disparity between my present condition and my hale and hearty appearance in ‘my’ televised appearances. I find his updates encouraging because I don't believe Commodore Tucker would allow them or that Burnell would deliver them if they didn't both foresee a day when I would return to service at my prior status.

Commander Rostov's visits are equally heartening for a similar reason. His updates on ships, weapons and technology give me hope that I will someday be allowed to patrol the stars again, though precisely  _ when  _ that will be is at a date still shrouded in mist and uncertainty. I also find Rostov to be good company, if oddly simple – though not ‘simple’ as in stupid. He’s actually an extremely intelligent man; he'd have to be in order to run the largest salvage operation in the Empire and to be trusted with updating me on the new technology and ship designs going into service. But interactions with him are simple. There is no jockeying for position, no posturing, no power struggle. He just ambles into my workshop, snaps off a salute, asks how I'm doing, and then sits beside me at the workbench to go over whatever schematics he has brought to share with me that day. It's almost as if his only ambition is to do good work, whether he's giving orders or taking them. I find his presence very calming and our conversations stimulating. If he wasn’t one of Tucker's lackeys, I could almost say I liked Commander Michael Rostov.

Almost.

As I return from today's meeting with the aforementioned Commander Rostov, musing on the unexpected consequences of my misbehaviour, I enter my quarters to find Commodore Tucker lounging in the chair beside my bed. Even though he never said he  _ wouldn't  _ enter my quarters without my permission, I have, for some reason, expected him to respect my privacy, so I’m incensed to find him here now, uninvited, especially as I’m tired and was actually looking forward to a bit of a rest. Well, yes, he is in charge of the whole station so  _ technically  _ he’s entitled to walk in anywhere he wants to, but I’ve developed a sense of ‘territory’ that helps to reinforce my battered ego, and I resent it not being respected. He wouldn’t just walk into Anna Hess’s quarters in her absence and park his arse in her chair as if he owned the place, would he?

Just as I’m opening my mouth to protest vociferously about his invading my space when I was not present, something bumps my ankle. I look down, and encounter a furry missile rushing up my body so unexpectedly I have no choice but to catch her in my arms or get smashed in the nose by her head. I can’t say I don’t suffer a few claw-punctures through my clothes on the way, but they’re a small price to pay for the welcome.

"Beans!" I shout, completely unable to conceal my delight. "Hello, sweetheart!"

She allows me to cradle her like a baby and scratch her chest and tummy – for a moment – before turning over and laying on my forearm, purring away like a motorboat. I'd been completely unaware of how much I missed her until this moment, and now I really just want to be left alone so I can cuddle her and pet her and enjoy having her with me – and I'll take time to be embarrassed about  _ that  _ later. But it would be rude to chase the commodore off now I know what he’s here for, and I really am grateful to him; and this time, I know exactly what to say. (I can even say it with a modicum of graciousness. I’m going soft.) "Thank you for bringing her here, Commodore."

"I'm glad to do it, Malcolm." He inclines his head in acknowledgement. "She's yours now. Ginny seemed to think the responsibility would be good for you."

Turning to a control panel that definitely hadn't been in the wall earlier today, he presses the button to open a sliding door and continues, "I've installed a compartment for storin' her food an' dish." 

Pointing to the corner, he indicates a small mechanical device that’s clearly a bubbling fountain. "Cats greatly prefer runnin' water to drink. You'll need to take that apart an' clean it once a week. The instructions are in the compartment with her food."

Then, jerking his thumb in the direction of the loo, "There's another compartment in the head for her litterbox that has a proximity sensor. You'll have to teach her to use it. Have you ever litter trained a cat before?"

I want to ask,  _ How hard can it be? _ Cats are fastidious creatures and I was always under the impression that such training practically took care of itself because of their tidy nature. Instead, I shake my head. "No, I've never had a cat. I've never had a pet of any kind."

He grunts at that, and though he doesn't comment, his expression speaks volumes. It's not exactly pitying, but clearly he thinks I’ve been deprived and that there’s something seriously wrong with someone never having owned a pet. Still, when he stands up he merely gestures for me to follow him. "Let me show you."

The bathroom is just large enough to accommodate both of us. He enters first, and I follow. Pointing past me, he indicates a sliding panel on the wall two or three centimetres above the floor. There’s a small rug in front of it with paw prints on it that looks a little like a welcome mat. "Put her down on that mat right there."

When I do, the panel slides open to reveal a small compartment with a red box full of some kind of pebbly, pellet like material which is clearly meant to be cat litter. "Now just gently put her  _ in _ the litter box," he advises, "an' move one of her front paws to scratch at the litter a bit."

I feel a little ridiculous, but I do as I'm told. I doubt Beans will be permitted to stay if she's shitting all over the place. "Now what?" I ask as I remain squatting, moving the very confused cat's paw against the litter, and feeling like an ass.

"That's all there is to it," Tucker says. "You can get up now."

I let go of Beans, and she promptly hops out of the box, steps off of the mat, and comes over to rub against my ankles.

Tucker gestures me out of the bathroom again and says, "Do that every half hour or so, every time you feed her, an' every time she wakes from a nap until she uses it on her own. I'm sure she'll get the hang of it today, or tomorrow at the latest. Just depends on how soon she needs to go."

"All right," I nod, wondering  _ and if she doesn't _ ? but we'll cross that bridge if we come to it.

"You'll need to scoop her litter at least once a day. It is  _ not _ flushable, so you'll have to put it down the solid waste chute. If you try to flush it an' clog the pipes, I'm gonna make you snake the toilet yourself, even if it goes all the way to the water reclamation plant, understand?"

"Yes, perfectly." Ordinarily I would bristle at his lecturing tone (and as for him ‘making me snake the toilet myself’, ohhh, he could try), but as I told him, I've never had a pet of any kind, so I need to know everything he is telling me if I want to be allowed to keep Beans on the station. Still, I do give him a bit of the beady eye, as in ‘Yes, I  _ do _ get the point, thank you.’

"Now, I've microchipped her an' installed RFID sensors on all the doors you're allowed to enter to recognize her chip so she can go wherever you go, but I'm not gonna activate that function for about a week. You should keep her confined to this room until then so she identifies it as her home base. Got it?"

I just nod my understanding. It seems an incredibly thoughtful action, and I wonder whether it's born out of consideration for me, concern for the cat, or his engineer's instinct to make things as simple and efficient as possible.

Pointing to a box at the foot of my bed, he continues, "I had them ship her beds an' toys up with her, so you can distribute them as you like. If some of them are a little cruddy, you can discard them an' let me know an' I'll requisition replacements, but you should wait a week or two before you do that. They all have her scent on them an' that's a huge component of makin' this place feel like home to her. It's not a good idea to give her all her toys at once. Get out two or three an' swap them in an' out every few days or weeks, dependin' on how long it takes her to lose interest.

"Right now she has only the one scratchin' post. You might want to get her a couple more, an' maybe an arch or a carpeted board."

He hands me a PADD. "I've downloaded a pet supply catalog an' a good book on carin' for an' trainin' cats. There's a lot of gadgets, toys, an' gimmicks out there that are nothin' but trash at best an' dangerous at worst, an' there's even more bad advice. I had Daddy ask his vet 'for a friend' an' this is what the vet recommended."

It's all getting a little overwhelming, and I say so. "Commodore, this is too much." For one thing it’s making me uncomfortable and for another it’s making me suspicious. Letting me off with bad behaviour is one thing.  _ Rewarding _ me for it is another. It’s just making it feel more and more likely that he does want something from me and is putting me under an obligation.

If that’s his game, he’s a lot more of a fool than I took him for. In the meantime, I want to know what’s going on.

"I'm not doin' it for you," he grumbles. "I just want to make sure Beans is gettin' the right kind of care."

"Yes, I realise that, and I will do my best to look after her," I say, shocked by how childish I sound making the promise; since when did I care so much about a bloody cat that I’d worry this much about its welfare? "But that's not what I'm talking about. A week ago, I was holding one of your people hostage, threatening her life. I've been waiting for a punishment, and it hasn't come. Instead, you told me you'd work on getting me out of here, and you've kept your word, and still no punishment.

"Why not? What exactly is going on here?"

He sits down on the chair again and looks at his linked hands, clearly considering what to say. I just lean against the wall, my hands in my pockets, and try to ignore the small motor purr of Beans rubbing against my leg to say how pleased she is to see me again.

"Well, I kind of got to thinkin' about everything we took away from you by bringin' you here," he says at last, and I swear I hear a note of contrition in his voice. "It was bad enough we drugged you against your will, an' I don't have the words to tell you how sorry I am about that, Malcolm, but we didn't have time to wait for you to agree an’ to be honest I’m not sure enough of you yet that I could’ve taken the chance even if you did. Then we got you here an' confined you to this one room after you had so much access at the bunker. We took away Ginny an' the family dinners an' the gym you used for your therapy. 

"It kind of made sense why you went a little stir crazy, an' I started to see the hostage thing as my fault as much as it was yours. So I apologized to Allie for both of us an' decided helpin' you adapt was a whole lot more important an' would be a lot more productive than punishin' you for findin' it difficult at first."

"So…you're not  _ going _ to punish me?" I ask in disbelief.

"Not for what's already happened," he says. But then he looks up at me, and his blue eyes are as hard as I’ve ever seen them. "But mark my words. You take advantage of this, of what I'm tryin' to do to make things easier on you, you screw me over or hurt my people, if I  _ don't _ kill you for it, the first thing I'm gonna do is lock you in here, alone, in the dark for twenty hours a day. I'll send Beans here back to the bunker, an' you an' I will start over from square one. You got that?"

I nod, hiding as best I can the painful reversion of feeling that this threat has generated. This in itself is a revelation – possibly a timely one; I hadn’t realised until now how successfully he’s penetrated my defences, how deeply in danger I am of putting  _ far _ too much trust in his goodwill. "I understand," I answer curtly.

He doesn't say anything more, just goes to exit my quarters with a grunt. As he goes, I can't help myself. Whatever warm fuzziness had started to grow inside me, smothering my essential core and making me so pathetically  _ grateful _ for being saddled with the job of caring for his bloody  _ cat _ – feeding and watering it,  _ entertaining  _ it, cleaning up its fucking shit – no matter how fond I am of her or how pleased I am to have her around again – that parting threat, his parting  _ shot _ at me incinerated it.

I was almost –  _ almost  _ – beginning to think of him as a friend. Or a potential one, anyway. My fledgling experiment in such stupidity evaporates, hurt masking itself as anger (Ginny would be proud) and I am compelled to respond, no matter what the consequences. I fire back without even thinking, almost against my will. "Commodore?"

He pauses on the threshold, one eyebrow lifting. I suspect he doesn’t think I’ve delayed his exit in order to swear eternal gratitude.

"I've heard it said that animals are good judges of character," I remark casually. "Cats, as I understand, are particularly choosy."

"So?"

"So, what do you think it says about us that  _ your  _ cat seems to prefer  _ me _ to  _ you _ ?"

When he turns, I can tell from his scowl that my return volley has hit its mark. 

"I don't know, Malcolm. Back at the bunker, I've seen her leap six feet straight up an' snatch one of those big brown thrashers in mid-air as it was takin' off out of a bush," he starts out in his good-ol'-boy story-telling tone.

"Sometimes she’ll make a meal of 'em an' sometimes, she'll just bite the head off. It's in a cat's nature to kill. A veterinarian'll tell you they're obligate carnivores, meanin' they can't get all the nutrition they need without eatin' meat, an' raw is best, so they kill to survive; an' they're real bastards about it, too, when they're not starvin'. A cat'll take half an hour to kill a chipmunk or a field mouse that a mink or a weasel would do in with one bite. They'll let it run, then snatch it back, over an' over, maybe maul it a little, just enough so it can't really go anywhere, an' just torment it until it's too exhausted with fright to run anymore; an' then they'll rip it apart. An' like men, sometimes they'll kill just for the hell of it, too." Oh, how quickly he turns didactic. He never misses a chance to prove he knows something I don't know.

"But, when Private Jones found a little gray Inca dove with a broken wing, I let him keep it in a box at his station to recover an' I'll be damned if she didn't climb in right next to it an' cuddle with it an' groom it an' keep it warm like it was a kitten." Now, he sounds surprised and even a little proud of his cat.

"I suppose most people would assume she found a kindred spirit in you, what with the way cats tend to torture things." Then his tone turns scalding. " _I_ think she just has a thing for motherin' creatures that are feelin' small an' hurt an' scared."

I know my mocking question struck home; he wouldn't have responded if it hadn't. But where I merely pierced his armour and left a small wound that will fester, he has completely broadsided me. 

He gives me plenty of time to fire back. There is an air of anticipation about him; he's waiting for it, ready to take whatever I might throw at him. But I cannot deliver the expected blow. I feel almost physically stunned. It's bad enough knowing I can be unhinged at the slightest provocation; having him read me so easily he can excavate those buried feelings and expose them, naked and raw, to the glaring light of day with nothing more than a few words is almost too much to bear. 

I cannot let his final assault go unanswered, but ultimately I haven't the wherewithal to actually fight back. But my lacerated pride won’t let me give in, and for all I know he almost certainly understands just how hard that blow has hit – that he  _ intended _ it to hit, and hurt badly – my Pack instincts come to my rescue. Just as with Burnell, I may die, but I won’t die yowling on my back. Instead, I just get off a last shot, firing blindly and far wide of the mark, to let him know that however badly wounded I may be, I haven't surrendered just yet.

I look back at him, allowing my eyes to open slightly and my teeth to show in anything but a smile. It’s a full Pack gesture, and I know that even as powerless as I am, it conveys every bit of the threat I mean it to. Right now, he holds all the cards; but if he thinks I am beaten and domesticated, he has made a very, very serious mistake.

I can wait. Sallis learned how good I am at waiting. And if needs be, I will wait until Hell freezes over to pay him back for that.

"In the future,  _ Commodore _ ," I emphasize his rank to remind him that I will not always be at his mercy, and if he fails to win me over and I survive there will be hell to pay, "do  _ not _ enter my quarters without my permission." I use my most threatening tone, but it still rings hollow, even to my ears; so I am not surprised when he snorts and walks out without so much as a 'By-your-leave, General,' let alone a proper salute.

* * *

**Chapter Sixty-Four**

**A Way Out of Indecision**

_ T’Pol _

It is rare, and disturbing, to see my – strangely, the word ‘mate’ seems to come to my mind, but of course that is an absurdity – my owner Commodore Tucker in the state of despondency to which he seems prey this evening.

He has eaten in the Mess Hall of course, but normally he works afterwards for a few hours before returning to his quarters. Tonight he is earlier than usual, and quiet. He goes in the shower almost at once and comes out wrapped in a towel, but instead of dressing in leisure clothes he sits on the sofa, picks up a ball and a padded glove from the cupboard beside it, and starts to bounce the former off the floor and wall opposite in such a way that it rebounds for him to catch it using the latter worn on his other hand.

Naturally I can perceive that it is an activity that requires considerable precision, both in calculating the force and direction of the throw and in placing his gloved hand exactly in position to be able to snatch the ball out of the air as it returns. He has obviously done this many times, for he begins to perform the action over and over again, without pausing. He does not speak, hardly acknowledges my existence (a lack of courtesy that is unusual in him these days), and once the routine has established a rhythm, simply stares at the wall, hardly even seeming to watch the flight of the ball.

Without advertising my presence in any other way, I make him a coffee and put it at a safe distance from his elbow. I am aware that he has somewhat of a sweet tooth, so this morning I went to the galley and made some cookies of a type the station’s library suggested were popular in his home state of Florida. The chef was unable to specify whether the oranges available were the correct type, apparently grown in Florida itself, but I reflected that the margin of error when used in a recipe was probably acceptably small. I am unsure whether the result was of an acceptable standard, but I followed the recipe carefully and when compared to the available photograph afterwards there was not too great a difference.

It has to be admitted that I had hoped he might notice the dish of cookies on the table as soon as he arrived, but clearly he has weighty matters on his mind. Accepting philosophically that the offering may still do something towards diverting him when he has leisure to stop and drink his coffee, I set several of the choicest on a small plate and place it beside the coffee mug, and retire to drink my own peppermint tea while I peruse a report on the suppression of unrest on Berengaria VII.

That section of the quadrant has been quiescent for decades. It may be coincidental that there have been indications of a potential uprising, but lately it is not the only quarter in which such murmurings have been heard and – where found – crushed. Normally the boot heel responsible for such brutal suppressions would have been found beneath the foot of General Reed, but at this present moment the general is effectively imprisoned elsewhere. Presumably underlings have been tasked with the ‘restoration of order’, or whatever other euphemism may be found for the suffocation of legitimate protest.

The rhythmic  _ thwack – thwack – splat, thwack – thwack – splat  _ continues. After a while I steal an unobtrusive glance at Trip’s face. It is preoccupied and dark, and I have little doubt as to the source of his preoccupation.

It also has to be admitted that I struggled to understand his logic in rescuing General Reed from what seemed to be a well-earned fate. It was not my place to argue with him, but there was no reason why I should not think my own private thoughts on the matter, and they were all gravely doubtful. Nothing that has happened since has significantly changed my views.

He was entirely logical, of course, in perceiving the immense value that Reed could bring to the slow, silent revolution that has begun to gather way here on Jupiter Station. If the general could be brought to align himself with us, his influence would be enormously powerful. But it is a huge ‘if’, and whenever I contemplate it the enormity of it recurs.

I have no personal reason to think kindly of Reed. He was not by any means the first man to rape me; when I was posted to  _ Enterprise _ and he was the Head of Security there I already knew that it would happen, and his reputation was such that I also knew that he was a sadist by temperament and that I would undoubtedly be subjected to a particularly vicious and prolonged assault. He exceeded that expectation, and thereafter ignored me except insofar as I was simply just another crewmember and therefore another object of his ceaseless, malevolent vigilance.

It appeared that there was only one person in the known universe (presumably excepting his parents, unless they had given him up long ago) who felt anything warmer for him than antipathy. I could only speculate that some form of deep-seated psychological condition accounted for Ensign Cutler’s regard for him, because he treated her with indifference at best, contempt and cruelty at worst.

She was left broken in his wake when he left the  _ Defiant _ , and during his subsequent rise to power it can safely be inferred that he gave not another thought to her existence. Commodore Tucker took it upon himself to act as her protector, and under his tutelage and that of Doctor Lucas she made something of a recovery. Now she is in charge of his daily care, and it appears that his attitude towards her has undergone something of a sea-change; but how far this change is genuine and how much of it a necessary deceit it is impossible to say. That he is entirely  _ capable _ of such deceit, there is no doubt. Whether he is actually  _ perpetrating  _ it is a different matter.

This, at a guess, is what is weighing so heavily on Commodore Tucker’s mind. I am reminded of an old Vulcan saying: ‘He who has a sehlat by the tail dares not let go’. He rescued Reed from certain death, and wants to trust him; but he is not a fool, and he knows as well as I do that the general is a treacherous and a dangerous man, who may well be simply biding his time until his chance comes to regain power and take revenge on us all.

“Damnation.” Trip heaves a sigh, and wearies at last of the incessant ball-catching. He takes off the glove, folds it around the ball and drops both back onto the table.

His coffee has gone cold by now. I make him a fresh one, while he samples the cookies and comments favorably on them. I do not tell him that I made them, but enjoy the small illogical pleasure of keeping that a secret; besides, if he does not know they are mine he will give me his genuine opinion rather than one modified to take account of my ‘feelings’.

“You are troubled,” I tell him, sitting in the armchair at right angles to the sofa. “I believe that I know what is preying on your mind. Would you like to discuss it?”

“Kinda obvious, isn’t it?” He runs a hand through his hair, disordering it still further. “I’ve gotta decide whether to kill a man.”

“General Reed.”

“That’s the guy.” He takes a sip of his coffee and then sits frowning down at it. “Time was when I’d have shot him out an airlock and danced on his frozen body, but a whole lot of things have changed since then.”

“You yourself have certainly done so.”

A rueful glance. “I’m workin’ on it.

“But the question that needs to be answered is –  _ can _ he change?”

I am not in a position to have any significant evidence on this one way or the other. The general has largely been confined to his quarters, and though of late he has been allowed some leeway to visit other areas he has been guarded at all times. Again, his behavior has largely been exemplary – there was, of course, a brief hostage situation a couple of weeks ago, but Doctor Salazar predicted that Reed’s mental state might be unstable for a time when he began to recover fully and Trip is of the opinion that the hostage was seized during one of those periods of instability. At the end of it, the general responded to reason and freed the hostage alive and almost unharmed. That, from a man who amputated one of his personal chef’s fingers for not cooking fish and chips properly, was a gesture of some munificence.

Still, allowing for the fact that most of the time of which he never has enough has been devoted to his primary task of overseeing the running of Jupiter Station, Trip has made it his business to interact with Reed on a fairly regular basis. I believe that for all his real wish to believe that progress has been made, he is clear-sighted enough to have grave doubts, and to know how catastrophic it would be if he were to make an error in trusting a man unworthy of it, especially given the immense power the general would wield once released.

Lieutenant Cutler apparently believes that progress  _ has _ been made. Unfortunately, her psychological condition (probably one that Humans refer to as ‘Stockholm Syndrome’) that renders her attracted to him renders her equally unable to judge him impartially. I am also aware that for all that he undoubtedly knows that failing to turn Reed would leave him no other alternative but to kill him, Trip’s affection for Cutler makes him reluctant to hurt her by doing so. I use the word ‘hurt’ but the probable effect would be ‘devastate’, and it is not improbable that she might literally choose to end her life in those circumstances.

Sighing, Trip tells me that he has been trying to persuade the general of his good faith, but so far without success. It is no surprise to me that a man as accustomed to treachery on all sides as Reed would find it practically impossible to believe in the honesty of a man he has been used to regarding as an enemy. And after having spent a year imprisoned and tortured by the very people he had allowed himself to trust, he will be more wary than ever of placing any in anyone, ever again. “I don’t know what more I can say to talk him round,” my mate continues gloomily, eating another cookie without apparently tasting it. “I daren’t let Liz mention it to him. He seems to have some kind of feelin’ for her, and that’s the one thing that’s in our favor right now. If he ever gets the idea she’s lobbyin’ for me, he’ll probably stop listenin’ to any of us.”

“But he has listened?”

“Oh yeah, he’s listened. Lately … well, lately, he's been payin’ attention,  _ really _ payin’ attention, like he was … like he wasn’t just thinkin’ I was crazy or tellin’ him lies just for the fun of it. Like he was actually thinkin’ about whether I might be tellin’ the truth.

“An’ today, I took Beans in to him. I’d had the maintenance guys adapt his quarters so she can live with him, be some company for him when he has to be on his own. He was so pleased to see her, it took him completely by surprise, an’ the way she purred… I swear, he was delighted. For just a couple of minutes, he wasn’t pretendin’, he wasn’t peerin’ at me through his defenses, he was just … happy. I swear, he was practically normal.

“Funny thing was, for one minute I thought we were finally actually gettin’ somewhere with him. Then something happened, and one flick of his tail and he was gone.”

The metaphor puzzles me for a moment, and then I realize that trying to convince the general of his honesty must be remarkably similar to shark fishing. The shark is visible, and may even come close enough to investigate the bait, but getting him to actually take it is a matter of patience and persistence and courage – and time, of which we have less and less as the days pass. And in the meantime, this particular shark is growing more and more powerful and more and more dangerous, and the risk involved in trying to interact with it at all is growing greater by the day.

I lean forward and place my hand on his knee. “I have a suggestion.”

He is halfway through eating another cookie, but his eyebrows quirk upwards.

“The mind-meld.”

This time his eyebrows rise so far they almost seem about to shoot off his forehead. We have melded many times now, and find it immensely pleasurable. We even make love sometimes in my white space – ‘our’ white space, now – and it lends a breadth and depth to our sexual encounters that is never possible in the real world.

But the aspect of sexuality aside, it was melding that finally enabled him to trust me. Clearly such an experience would go far towards convincing General Reed of the same, if he could be persuaded to take part in it – if he could find the faith and courage to meet his enemy in an environment where deceit is impossible.

_ If. _

“He’d never go for it,” says Trip, shaking his head. “Never in a million years.”

“You would lose nothing by asking him,” I point out.

“Sweetheart, the only way I’d get Reed to co-operate with somethin’ like this would be to tie him down an’ muzzle him.”

“I would not perform the meld in those circumstances.” My voice is primly reproving, because that is what he expects, even though he is joking and I know it. No matter what could potentially be achieved by such a course of action, it would not be one Trip would ever perpetrate on anyone.

I am beginning to get a sense of the direction of my … of Commodore Tucker’s thoughts. The idea of the white space has directed his thoughts towards some of the things we do there – things that have nothing to do with General Reed, but everything to do with our intimacy and pleasure. I know that from a scientific point of view it is nonsensical, but sometimes I receive the impression that his eyes change color with his mood, and now they have taken on a smoky blueness.

“Well, even if Mal doesn’t know what he’s missin’,  _ I _ sure wouldn’t mind a visit,” he says, running a hand lightly up my thigh. “Seein’s I’m showered, how about it?”

It is delightful to be  _ asked  _ – to have the power to refuse. But I do not wish to refuse. The touch of his fingers wakes me to desire.

“It is most fortunate that I myself showered only an hour ago,” I reply, making it my business to loosen the towel from about his waist, so that it falls to the floor as we stand.

We stumble joined towards the bed, he removing my clothes. We lie down entwined, and my fingers move to the psi points on his face. His expression is trusting, eager.

I think momentarily of reaching out to a different face – dark, narrow, filled with suspicion, anger and fear. A shudder shoots through me, and I thrust it away as my  _ katra _ reaches for the one to whom I belong.

* * *

**Chapter Sixty-Five**

**Not Me Who’s The Crazy One**

_ General Malcolm Reed _

I’m more convinced than ever these days that that delta radiation did more than fry what Mama Tucker presumably thought of as her lil’ boy’s good looks; it must have had more than a peek into whatever basket holds what little sense he once possessed, and done that a power of no good either.

Being  _ nice  _ to people?

Hell’s bells and buckets of blood, what does he really think that will get him, apart from pissed on from a great height?

But more incredible than anything else (Lord, if it wasn’t so funny I’d run a mile in case his mania’s contagious) is that he actually expects  _ me  _ to take a leaf out of his book and start trying to act as mad as he is!

Well. I dare say he  _ has  _ tried it here on Jupiter Station, and I dare say he  _ has  _ had some success. Almost against my will I recall how startled I was by the progress that had been made when I ... Lucifer, how long ago that seems now. Leaning on the wall beside the Observation Lounge’s viewing port, staring out across the burnished duranium expanse of the external hull, I remember the view from the bridge of the  _ Sirius  _ as  _ Dreadnaught  _ and  _ Invictus _ moved forward to examine the vast station for threats. A scene that had been chaotic had been transformed, with progress made that I’d never have believed possible if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.

And it wasn’t just external. Since the good Commodore came to the conclusion that I’m duly tamed enough to trot about a bit without biting people (though not nearly housebroken enough to wander very far unchecked and certainly not unsupervised), I’ve had the opportunity to weigh up the station from the inside too. In the weeks following the hostage incident, my designated 'range' has gradually increased. Naturally I’m still only allowed in very limited areas, mostly the quieter lower levels and certainly not the busy common areas like the mess hall, the main gym, the primary construction and salvage bays, and the arrivals and departures lounge; considering I already know a number of things about him and his plans that could get him executed for treason, he obviously doesn’t want me taking any opportunity to disclose that information to anyone who could pass it on. 

When we were in the bunker it was simple enough, it was staffed by people he could trust, but here on Jupiter Station things are very different. Engineering personnel are regularly rotated back from the lines for refresher training, and I very much doubt whether he’s had time to get them  _ all  _ eating out of his hands yet; though from what I have seen from a distance, no one is averse to shaking them, and it's astonishing to me how much goodwill and fellow feeling that small act of human contact seems to generate. Not to mention the presence of the MACOs and Command personnel who are stationed here on a regular basis, as well as the captains and crews of the ships docked for maintenance and refitting, who take the opportunity for a change of scene while their vessels are being refurbished. Not only are there bound to be spies in place – that’s the Empire’s stock-in-trade after all – but any MACO (excepting perhaps Corporal Cole and any of the others he has taken into his confidence) would regard orders from me as superseding his duty of obedience to a mere Commodore. 

For all that I reluctantly have to admit to myself that I now owe Tucker something better than a show trial and an extremely protracted execution, I wouldn’t hesitate for a second to order his arrest for treason and make arrangements to have the device that allows him to hijack my heartbeat removed while he was secured. My attitude towards him may have mellowed somewhat, but have no doubt of it, if I can get free I’ll do it by any means necessary. Our recent minor spat has made me more anxious than ever to do so, at which time I will make a point of revisiting the issue of exactly who is ‘small and hurt and scared’  _ now. _

He’s made it clear in his charmingly blunt way that he’s quite aware of my ambitions on the score of regaining my freedom, and it’s a relief that he still has that much common sense left. Therefore once I leave my own room I’m constantly shadowed by two guards, MACOs both of them, so that anyone seeing them will take them for my personal bodyguard and think nothing of it. But it transpires they are now MACOs in name only, and when I inform them conversationally that the day may come when I'm in a position to repay them for their infidelity, they simply share a look and shrug, which I realise some while later is a profound statement more eloquent than words of the deep regard they feel for Commodore Tucker. The tracker fitted to me ensures I’m not even tempted to stray beyond the set limits, so presumably their job is to make sure I don’t try to communicate with anyone I may encounter wandering into my tightly circumscribed little world. But even what I can see for myself and access through various databases reinforces the message that however he’s achieved it, he really has done something above and beyond what I for one would ever have thought possible. 

I should probably have been prepared for that when I found myself unable to circumvent the safeguards he’d placed around my computer access (the computer being an upgrade from the PADD as I continued to behave myself and earn additional privileges); without wishing to sound unduly modest, when it comes to sneaking my way around circuitry I’m probably one of the best there is, and I spent a very frustrating afternoon quietly digging one figurative escape tunnel after another only for the ceiling to repeatedly fall in on me with a deafening blast of  _ Rule Britannia  _ from the built-in speakers. The way he smirked at me when he visited that evening and made a point of introducing the number ‘seventeen’ into the conversation on the most spurious of excuses made it abundantly clear that he knew exactly what I’d been up to and exactly how often I’d been caught doing it. And just in case I might by any remote chance have missed the joke, he whistled the first line of  _ Rule Britannia _ as he left.

There are times when Commodore Tucker’s sense of humour is extremely tiresome.

No doubt the expertise he gleaned during his dissection of  _ Defiant _ has enabled him to adapt the technology into ours, giving him a station that’s years more advanced than anything anywhere else. And it runs with superlative efficiency. When I started walking around, the first thing I noticed was that although the crew work with energy and commitment, they don’t flinch when a superior officer addresses them. I’m pleased to report that they still flinch a bit when they notice  _ me _ , but when Trip was first giving me the tour it was immediately apparent that for all they looked rightly nervous of me, they looked at him as if trusting him to save them.

Well. That pretty bracelet of his may indeed be the saving of them, but reluctantly I acknowledge that probably very few of them know of its existence; most of the time it’s invisible under the sleeve of his uniform. So it’s not his power over  _ me _ that they trust, but his will not to expose them to something that poses any real threat. The dim reflection opposite me grins wryly at the realisation that Commodore Tucker walking me around Jupiter Station is much on a par with Archer walking that fucking Rottweiler of his around  _ Enterprise _ ; everyone knew Satan could rip an arm off without breaking sweat, but that choke-chain around his neck was the guarantee that – at least until it was decided you only needed one arm to do your job anyway – both of them would be staying attached for the time being.

The difference here is that people apparently trust Tucker not to turn  _ me  _ loose just for the hell of it to see what I get up to.

The business end of _my_ choke chain is attached to the back of my breastbone, with the hand loop at the other end closely and constantly monitoring the smooth operation of my master's pulse. If his stops, so will mine. A charming arrangement indeed, but as I’ve mentioned, I doubt whether its existence is widespread public knowledge. That means it’s Tucker they trust to keep me in line, and given my colourful past it’s a real tribute to the man’s powerful personality. That level of trust doesn’t grow overnight, nor – in this delightful universe we inhabit – does it grow easily.

Still, even though I can’t help but admit that these peculiar methods of his may possibly have their merits in the closed-off world of a space station, I’ll be damned if I’m going to adopt them. And I’m still not at all sure there’s not some very dark and secret ulterior motive behind all this wouldn’t-it-be-lovely-if-we-were-all-kind-to-each-other crap he seems to think I’m going to take at face value. Hoshi’s still single and available; so am I; so is he, and we’re both undoubtedly aware that there are those other than ourselves who’ll see a woman in control of the Empire as being ripe for seizure. I may have been allowed contact with some of my MACO officers via video link recently, but what I was allowed to say to them was very carefully scripted – the Commodore was off screen but well within my line of sight, and I strongly suspected it wasn’t a coincidence that his right hand was resting casually on his left, with his thumb discreetly tucked under the cuff of his uniform where that damn bracelet of his lurks. I was well aware that my continued existence was being demonstrated to the MACOs in order to keep the infighting from kicking off, and so far it seems to have succeeded, but he saved me because – in his own words – he thought I could be ‘useful’.

Useful  _ for what _ is still to be established, I reflect darkly. I simply refuse to believe that he really is trying to get  _ me _ to buy into his ‘Peace and Love’ lunacy; it would be on a par with asking a man-eating tiger to go vegetarian.

But I have to admit that at least so far his treatment of me has been pretty fair on the whole – we’ve had our disagreements, but what relationship doesn’t? – and immeasurably better than what he’d have got from me if our positions had been reversed. He has continued to allow dear Miguel full rein with the now necessarily long-distance supervision of my recovery, of necessity from a distance, now, and in fairness the two of them did even allow me the dignity of choosing the day I had my ... shall we call it ‘added extra’ ... removed, and the method of its extraction.

A strange experience, that. I didn’t feel much like talking for a couple of days afterwards, and to do them justice they didn’t press me to. Even now the thought of it makes me feel a bit queasy, though you’d have thought I’d got used to it by now.

As for the other, additional complication in my life...

...I have no idea what to do about  _ her. _

My history to date has given me more than enough information about women’s bodies. It kept me bang up to date with how to play on their fears, how to plumb the depths of their terrors, how to root out their weaknesses and use every one to tie them up and paralyse them or set them dancing to whatever tune I chose to pipe. They were prey, soft and vulnerable and easy meat for a killer, there to be used and battered into obedience.

I used her, yes, and battered her too, when I felt like it. Now when she comes into my room (always asking first), she’s clearly watching for the signals we’ve evolved that indicate I need a friendly contact; without making too much of it and damaging my fragile dignity, she leans over me and licks my mouth gently. Although things she’s said occasionally suggest she understands why I haven’t even tried to touch her sexually, I’m beginning to find her proximity arousing; maybe that’s a sign of recovery, though wounds far beyond the reach of a surgeon still break open and bleed inside me when I think about actually  _ having _ sex. Maybe with Liz it would be different, but right now even the thought of having someone touch me in that way gives me the absolute horrors, and once or twice lately when I’ve woken to sticky sheets I went into the shower and scrubbed myself half raw, while the sound of my cries echoed off the Plexiglas.

I haven’t told anyone about that, though I suspect from the abundance of cuddles on those days that someone must have heard me. Her lick-kisses are always light, but after the ... after the long showers, they’re particularly tender.

Sometimes I even lick her in return, and when I don’t, I think she understands that too.

She has such a sweet smile.

=/\=

Which is more than can be said for Comm-a-dawr Tucker, bless his cotton socks, who has now apparently decided he has nothing better to do with his day than come and badger me  _ again  _ on the topic of joining this lunatics’ crusade of his.

We talk. Except it’s more like fencing than talking, because he’s trying to get through my guard and I’m resolutely declining to let him. I’m too old to believe in fairy-tales, thank him very much, and if he thinks I’m going to fall for this taradiddle he’s trying to feed me, he’s got another think coming.

After about an hour he’s getting so impatient that I wonder rather nervously how his pulse is doing and whether being a bit more conciliatory might be wise. Not that I’d actually believe him, but honesty isn’t  _ always _ the best policy – especially when it gets the pulse racing and one’s survival depends on it staying within set parameters. The words ‘too fast, too slow, or gone’ are somewhat engraved on my memory.

"Look, Malcolm, I can talk till I'm blue in the face…"

"Oh, please do," I cut in somewhat incautiously. "I'd quite enjoy seeing you become cyanotic and pass out from hypoxia." I don't know why I tend to do that just when I'm thinking about the risks associated with exciting, angering, or excessively frustrating him. Perhaps it's a subconscious death wish, or maybe I’m still smarting from that ‘small and hurt and scared’ gibe.

His blathering can be  _ exceedingly  _ tiresome.

"… but we have too much history between us an' you’re so suspicious of everythin'..." As usual, he simply gives me a look and keeps talking as if I haven't interrupted.

I’m seated on the sofa by now, watching him pace. My rehabilitation has been coming along well – I can now bench sixty kilos, which was the first of my markers, but getting there has been a struggle and after a workout I’m still tired and aching. For the first time in my life, I understand what it means to 'feel one's age' and it's rather dreadful. "Suspicion has kept me alive all my life,” I point out waspishly, and then like a wasp indeed I can’t resist injecting the venom a little deeper. “The last time I really trusted anyone was the day I came to inspect Jupiter Station, and you know how  _ that _ worked out."

He folds his arms and looks back levelly at me. "Yeah, I do, an' I know my part in it, an' that's why nothin' I can ever say will convince you. I know how easily words can be used to make lies, an’ you probably know that even better than I do, so I can accept that it's too much to ask for you to believe what I  _ say. _ "

"Well, then, what do you propose to do?" 

"We need to  _ get past _ words. The Vulcans have a technique, they can look inside a person's mind, see what's really there. T'Pol seems to think she can do that with me an', if you're willin', she can bring you along with her. You'd see things through my eyes, whatever I chose to show you. You'd know what I thought, how I felt. I wouldn't be able to lie about anythin' because I wouldn't be usin' words. You'd be experiencin' things through my thoughts an' memories."

Ohhhhhh, he has no idea how these words fall howling into the icy depths inside me. He isn’t even watching me that closely, preoccupied with exploring for himself how this proposed experience could advance his plans if he can talk me into going along with it. He doesn’t even realise that I already know about mind melds, let alone that I’ve already experienced one.

V’Rel.

The man who uncovered the monster I’d become, who revealed the whole appalling system whereby Section 31 operatives were turned into mindless, murdering slaves.

Lucifer knows I’ve had time enough to come to terms with it, but even now the memory sends a visceral shudder through me. It was that discovery that set me on the path to power, set me searching out the others who’d been conditioned and brought into obedience for Harris’s purposes. And, inevitably, that brought me to....

V’Rel died. I killed him. He was my soul, which was already damned.

But these are not things I have any intention of sharing with anyone,  _ ever _ , so with a colossal effort I thrust them back into the core of me and maintain an external appearance of calm, slightly mocking cynicism.

“Vulcans.”

“Yep. Green blood, pointy ears, got a thing about emotions. You may’ve noticed ‘em around.”

_ Especially around your quarters, mate, _ I think sardonically. T’Pol may have taken to dressing in a uniform these days (albeit one with ‘SLAVE’ on it), and gets to walk around the station rather than lying chained to Tucker’s bed waiting for her lord and master to feel like spreading her legs and giving her one, but she and hers have never had reason to love Humans and I damn well won’t believe they’ve found one recently. What the  _ bloody hell _ gives him the idea that it’s safe letting her between his ears, with full access to all the ultra-sensitive information he must possess?

Yes, and that reminds me.

“The uniforms.”

My sudden non-sequitur takes him by surprise; for once his endless gabbling comes to a stop, if only for a breath or two. He’s over by the drinks dispenser, pouring himself a coffee, and he scowls across at me while he tries to work out the connection. Finally, giving up the search for something that isn’t there, “What  _ about  _ the uniforms?”

“The women’s uniforms.” Specifically, the uniforms that showed off flat, toned midriffs and everything north and south of them to best effect for male delectation. “Why don’t your female engineers wear the female uniforms?”

He dismisses that with a wave of the hand – fortunately not the one that has his mug of coffee in it. “Simple health an' safety.  There's a lot of dangerous chemicals in engineerin’; an' when they’re on a weldin’ job, there’s sparks flyin', even sometimes bits of metal. On average, I'd say my female engineers are better at the job than the men because they're better with precision tasks, with the sole exception bein' times when a task requires brute force. Seemed stupid to me not to provide them with equal protection just so a bunch of horny bastards can get an eye full of skin when one of 'em walks by. The Empress saw the sense in it right away when I submitted it to her for approval. The one-piece is now the standard engineerin' uniform across the Empire – just a few basic adaptations to allow for curves.”

I hide a grin at that. From a practical point of view it undoubtedly makes excellent sense – replacing a scorched uniform is far more time- and energy-efficient than repairing a scorched belly, however toned it may be. But I doubt if Hoshi shed superabundant tears over the idea of covering over all those attractive bodies in workhorse one-pieces. It will merely make the contrast between them and her own curvaceous and beautifully displayed body all the more telling, and that, I’m quite sure, was what sold her on the idea, even more than Trip’s earnest pursuit of increased Health and Safety for his staff.

As for him referring to ‘horny bastards’ with such an air of saintly disapproval, well. It’s about on a par with me looking down my nose at the Marquis de Sade.

“But what about the mind-meld?”

His question as he sits down opposite me jerks me from the memory of how the officers and crew on  _ the other Enterprise _ also wore effectively unisex uniforms. The first time I saw a woman wearing one here brought the recollection back to me with a jolt, and now the treacherous thought drifts into my mind that Tucker’s lunatic vision for World Love would sound far less lunatic there....

"You say it goes beyond words," I muse, "meaning you wouldn't be talking?"

"That's right," he nods encouragingly.

"Oh, gods yes, then," I say with heavy irony. "Anything to shut you up!"

He doesn't respond with irritation or annoyance, but he doesn't appreciate my humour either. "I'm bein' serious, Malcolm. If you could just see the world how I see it, it could change everything. So, what do you think about the possibility of the two of us sharin' a mind-meld?" 

“I  _ don’t _ think about it  _ at all _ ,” I reply shortly. Perhaps more shortly than I would have done if the memories weren’t such unbearably intimate ones, but I’m not going to make excuses. “And if you’ll forgive my bluntness, Commodore,  _ you  _ shouldn’t be thinking about it either. It may have escaped your notice, but what you’re suggesting would almost certainly come under the heading of conspiring with the Empress’s enemies. In a word, treason.”

“That’s not what I’m doin’ it for.”

Lucifer, he’s so naïve, even now! Perhaps if I spell it out in words of no more than two syllables he’ll get the picture. “It doesn’t matter  _ what _ you’re doing it for.” I lean forward and speak very slowly and clearly, hoping his ears are functioning properly because his intelligence certainly isn’t. “Your  _ intentions  _ are completely beside the point. I was the head of the Empire’s security, and I’m telling you now, what  _ matters _ is that Vulcans are a conquered species. Slaves. And the one you’re talking about isn’t just a slave, she’s a  _ failed rebel.  _ The only reason she got let off with her life was because you wanted her as a fuck-toy and the newly-ascended Empress realised such a gift could be enough to earn her some goodwill from the man she intended to make the Empire's chief engineer. And now you’re proposing to give her access to your brain, which holds information that could give her fellow rebels so much power they might well be able to stage another rebellion – a successful one this time, if they could somehow get access to enough materiel and facilities on the quiet.”

He sits forward. Although the posture shows his eagerness to convince me, his words are surprisingly rational. “Malcolm, that’s not how meldin’ works. It’s not like connectin’ a portable hard drive to a computer terminal an' downloadin' all the raw data.

“ _ You _ allow access to the person meldin’ with you.  _ You _ show them what you want them to see.  _ You _ stay in control the whole time.”

I can’t help it. In a move that’s nakedly defensive, I pull my legs up and tuck them sideways. It’s still not completely comfortable – the flesh at the base of my abdomen is still a little tender, deep inside – but the memories of V’Rel’s touch inside my head are far too vivid even now.

‘In control the whole time’? That wasn’t how it had felt before, although the whole point of the exercise was that the Vulcan search for material that I’d been carefully conditioned to forget. 

Harris and his team of experts were well aware of the risks if even one of their lab rats should ever regain the memories of exactly what had been done to them, and but for the temporary disruption in service effected by that Gorn booby-trap it’s highly unlikely that the mental blocks would have shifted. Even so, in order to get to the bottom of the mystery I had to allow V’Rel access to pretty well anywhere he wanted, and it wasn’t an experience I’m anxious to repeat. Even apart from what felt like violation of my mind rather than my body, his access to it pretty well guaranteed he wouldn’t leave Sickbay alive; I couldn’t take the risk of him talking – not now he  _ knew _ ....

I’d been aware of that before he walked in, of course. What I hadn’t known was that I’d be sorry he had to die, that I’d encounter a man I could have loved and have to kill him.

V’Rel, of course, was dispensable. I have the distinct feeling that Commodore Tucker will not view T’Pol in the same light. (When I had her as part of the initial interrogation procedure it was like shagging a sex doll, though she did have the most amazing tits. Maybe she’s warmed up a bit since then, because tits or no, I should think even Tucker would have got bored of the inertia by now.)

I could, of course, agree to the experiment if we found A N Other Vulcan whom he  _ wouldn’t _ mind me killing afterwards. Time was when I’m fairly sure he would have found this a perfectly reasonable compromise. In his present deluded frame of mind, however, I fear he might turn all sentimental on me and say he wouldn’t approve of that either.

Besides, even aside from the horrendous risk of allowing a non-disposable Vulcan access to the minds of  _ not only _ the Head of the Empire’s Engineering Programme  _ but also  _ its de-facto Head of Security, and thereby involving both of them in an open and shut case of treason that would see the pair of us in front of a firing squad without even the formality of a trial, there’s the small matter of what she might be able to access in mine on other matters than security.

Ants leave a chemical trail, and who knows whether probing Vulcans might do something of the same? Once she was in there I’ve no doubt the temptation to take a peek would be damn near irresistible.

_ No. _

I think he knows from my expression that I’m not having it. Subtly I tense my muscles, and watch for his right hand to move to his left wrist. There are guards outside, and for all that he promised not to coerce me, that was presumably qualified by the words ‘as long as you co-operate’. A few presses of the button on that wristband, and I’ll be disabled by my own heartbeat. It won’t take long for them to carry me to Sickbay, and then they’ll tie me down and call for T’Pol, and it really won’t matter any more whether I consent or not. Maybe, in a weird sort of way, it’ll be a relief when they do; then I’ll be back in a world I recognise, however hateful it may be.

“Malcolm, I know how hard this must be for you, but I’m askin’ you to trust me,” he says quietly.

“You mean trust the man who co-operated to get me drugged, surgically altered, raped and impregnated.” I almost spit the words at him. “Who’s wearing an armband that will kill me if I don’t do as I’m told." 

“Yes, I co-operated with the orders I received.” His voice is still low and even. “I had no choice, you've acknowledged that, an' I hated you anyway. I thought you were gonna be put on trial, thrown into prison, maybe just quietly done away with, an' I could live with that, no problem.

“I had no idea they were gonna do what they did to you, an' it made me sick to my stomach when I found out. No-one should have that done to them, no matter who they are, no matter what they’ve done. I told you I wanted to rescue you to kill you myself, an' that was the truth, but at least you’d have died as a man – not like some goddamn lab experiment.

“It was those three words you said that changed the ball game. ‘End of Humanity’. You weren’t talkin’ about yourself, you weren’t askin’ for help, you were tryin’ to warn me what was goin’ on. In that moment you showed me there’s some real good buried inside that cruel, murderin’ sonofabitch I thought you were. That’s when I knew I had to take the chance an' get you out of there – an' try to see if I could get you onside with what’s goin’ on here.”

“So in a word, this is payback time, finally,” I jeer, mostly to save myself from thinking about his idiotic theory that there’s some ‘real good’ buried inside me; it’s been a damn few years since that was true. “You saved my arse, now I’m supposed to be suitably grateful and do whatever you want. However lunatic I think it may be! I’m merely surprised you don’t simply tell me what’s going to happen to me and have done with it. After all, I’m just _small and hurt and scared_ , aren’t I? Why the fuck should you care whether I trust you or not?”

"You – wha – huh? Sma – Malc –  _ What? _ "

"That's what you called me the day I came back to my quarters to find you there with Beans," I remind him savagely. My god! Do I really need to  _ remind  _ him? He absolutely  _ flayed _ me, and he expects me to believe he  _ doesn't remember _ ? 

"Malcolm, I…I'm sorry, I don't recall!" He shakes his head, and, to my horror, his expression tells me it's true. He has no recollection of the event whatsoever. I feel my eyes prickling and my throat getting tight. If it was nothing to him,  _ why _ should it mean so much to me?

An image flits into my mind. Christopher. Thin, blond, the only one of my schoolmates to ever call me  _ friend _ . The connection between them in my mind dawned on me a while ago. That, if anything, is the answer to the question of why I care that Tucker doesn't recall his devastating gibe, but I thrust it away ferociously. Right now, I want him to explain why having my trust matters to him. I even want him – and how fucking stupid am I to even hope it could be possible – to somehow make up for the pain I suffered when he took advantage of his knowledge of me to hurt so cruelly.

Ginny again.  _ Hurt masking itself as anger. Own the emotion and deal with what you’re really feeling, not what you’re pretending to feel because it’s easier to admit to. _

Fuck me, what am I hoping for? He’ll put a sticking plaster over my laceration and kiss it better?

To recall this extremely minor incident to his recollection, I go on, in a voice shaking with anger I can’t control, "When I asked you what it meant that she preferred me to you, because animals are supposed to be such good judges of character and cats are especially selective about the people they choose, you said  _ she liked to mother things that were small and hurt and scared! _ "

His expression is changing. He's honestly trying to remember, and I curse myself for broadcasting my emotions so recklessly that he now realises he somehow hurt me and he wants to make it better. For one thing, it shows just how much he hurt me – how much  _ power  _ he had to hurt me – and it reveals my weakness. It shows how badly I was wounded, and far worse, it shows it hasn’t healed.

_ It shows I care. _

I should drop it, because right now my defences are lying wide open and that’s something I can’t allow at any price, but he's trying and for some ridiculous reason I  _ need _ to know. I need an answer. Lucifer help me, I want him to work a miracle  _ and make things better _ .

"You'd just threatened to lock me away alone in the dark if I crossed you, to isolate me and revert to the same kind of imprisonment and cruelty I'm supposed to thank you for saving me from." Even as I say this, giving in to this painful emotional overload, I realise I am stronger than I was before. I may admit to feeling hurt where before I would have simply have marinated silently in my anger until I found an appropriate opportunity to exact a revenge that would have made what I did to Sallis pale by comparison, but at least, having to talk about it, I  _ can _ talk about it without blubbering like a child. It's an indication of both how far I have come and how far I've yet to go. "When I asked about Beans, you told me about how she kills some desert birds but she mothered Private Jones's Inca…"

He snaps his fingers as the memory surfaces. "The Inca dove! Yeah, I remember now!" In the next few seconds, his mangled features go through so many different expressions there's no way I have time to interpret them all. Among those I recognize are surprise, confusion, regret, and something akin to amusement, and then he finally settles on a beaming, brilliant epiphanic grin that makes me want to disembowel him with a rusty spoon; so he thinks my pain is  _ funny? _ "So  _ that's  _ the burr that's been under your saddle lately!"

"And why shouldn't it be?" I snarl, trying to make my voice sound harsh with disdain and bitterness rather than rough with emotion. "You take every fucking bloody opportunity there is to remind me that I’m  _ helpless!”  _ I stab a finger towards the wrist where that bracelet is peeping from under his cuff. “Like you hadn’t already made that  _ perfectly _ clear!"

The grin evaporates from his face faster than the contents of a flask of liquid nitrogen after they've been spilled onto the floor. It's replaced by a look of contrition, and though I can't quite be certain of its sincerity, he has given me his word that he wouldn't lie to me. Except for the day they returned me to the station, I haven't once caught him breaking any of the promises he made to me during our first meeting in the Bunker, even when I put him on the spot with his brother-in-law, so it's hard not to give him the benefit of the doubt when he speaks again.

"Malcolm," he says gravely, holding my gaze in a way that would be very uncomfortable if he were Pack, "I'm sorry."

For a long moment he lets his words hang in the air. It's such a stunningly simple apology with no bullshit explaining how what he did wasn't really as bad as I'd perceived it to be that I almost believe he means it, but when he resumes talking, my doubts begin to rise again.

"It was never my intention to make you feel that way. I never meant to make you feel demeaned or diminished. In my mind, I guess we were just bickerin'. I said something to piss you off…"

"You  _ threatened  _ me," I interrupt to remind him, and he stops.

After a moment, he nods, much to my surprise. "Yeah, you're right, I did, an' that was wrong. An' rather than callin' me out on it, you said somethin' to piss me off, so I fired back – it's a two way street, you know, neither of us can fight by ourselves. At any rate, I never really imagined that anything I could say would ever frighten or worry you or make you feel, well, as you put it, ‘helpless’." 

"Well, you've done a bloody good job accomplishing something you never intended to do," I reply sullenly. "So, why'd you do it?"

It's hard to imagine him faking the bewildered look he shoots me – he's not that good an actor – but when he starts to  _ laugh  _ at me, well, if I had a knife to hand, he'd stop it very bloody quickly; though it does conveniently distract him from my absolute mortification over what I only now realise I've just admitted to him. I'm sure if he noticed that I confessed to  _ feeling _ ‘small, hurt and scared’ – worse yet, acknowledged that he could  _ make _ me feel that way – he'll be off crowing about it to Ginny within the hour. Is this what counselling is meant to do to me, make me subject to slipping into such vulnerability without warning, almost without notice?

"I'm sorry, Malcolm," he says when he finally gets control of himself, "but have you forgotten exactly who in the hell you  _ are _ ?"

Now, I'm sure I must look as confused as he did a moment ago. "What do you mean?"

He sighs and gives me a look that's part exasperation, part disbelief.

"I  _ mean _ , whatever's been done to you lately, you're still Chief Advisor to the Empress, Supreme Commander of the Imperial Forces, Commander in Chief of the MACOs, an' Head of Imperial Security. You might not be one hundred percent fightin' fit right now, but you're too damned clever to ever be  _ helpless.  _ You're General goddamn  _ Reed _ , the scariest sonofabitch in the known universe!”

He leans forward, his expression now completely earnest.  "I wasn't threatenin' you to  _ scare _ you, Malcolm, I was lettin' you know that I haven't forgotten for one little minute just how very dangerous you are an' that I'm takin' proper precautions to protect my people an' myself so that you'd think twice about doin' anything reckless like tryin' to escape or contactin' one of your elite MACO teams to come an' get you. I'm still tryin' to figure out how to get through to you. I don't know what kind of language you really understand, other than violence an' threats of violence, an' I guess I was hopin' you'd see it as a sign of respect.

"Now, I told you the first day in the Bunker that I wasn't gonna coerce you to do anything, an' I  _ meant _ that," he assures me. "I'm not tryin' to control you, Malcolm, but I kept you alive an' I brought you here; that makes me responsible for what you do. So, I've got to protect my people from you. Any threats I may have made, intentional or otherwise, are just my way of statin' the consequences you can expect if you try to hurt me an' mine. I am knowin'ly givin' you enough rope to hang yourself, but I won't be the one to tie it in a noose, put it round your neck, an' pull it tight. I'm just standin' here holdin' the end of it. An' I'm  _ not _ gonna use force or violence or manipulation or pain or humiliation to  _ make _ you do a goddamn thing, Malcolm. I'm just gonna keep askin' an' hopin' you'll agree to throw in with me.

"You've always done your best to make sure your MACOs are treated right, so you can't reasonably hold it against me for doin' the same for my people. As for gettin' you to trust me not to hurt you or force you into doin' somethin' you don't wanna do, well, I guess all either one of us can do is wait."

I can't help shaking my head. There's still too much I don't understand about whatever he might be up to. Yes, I'll admit I was just the tiniest bit chuffed, if only for a moment, when he said he recognized I was still a threat. It was the first time in a long time that I felt like someone was seeing _me_ instead of some mad, wounded creature, but then I realise he would more than likely say anything, _anything at all_ , to get me to give in and go along with his lunatic schemes.

"All right!" I finally decide to concede one of his points,  _ for now _ , only because it gets in the way of discussing another. "Let's just pretend I accept – and I don't, really, but I'm saying I do so we can move on – I accept that all of your threats to date have really only been warnings of the potential consequences of my…bad behaviour."

"All right, you accept it only for the sake of argument," he agrees.

"I still don't understand why it matters that I'm willing. You have  _ all the power _ in this situation." In case there's any question what I mean, I point to his wrist again. "Right there! Why don't you just fucking  _ use it _ to get what you want?"

His eyes glitter like ice chips when he's angry, but now, they're burning like a gas jet. Is this hurt or offence? Have I  _ wounded  _ him? 

Time was when I’d have known which I hoped it was. Now I’m not sure, and that realisation makes me almost as mad at myself as I am at him.

"Get this through your thick skull, you hard-headed, stubborn little Limey bastard." His voice is rough, not hard. He might be angry, but there's something else there, too. Something masquerading as anger, perhaps? I bet none of them ever expected that, while she's been helping me sort myself out, Ginny has also been teaching me to read other people even better than I did before. "I don't want a fuckin' tool. I don't want a goddamned trained monkey who'll do an' say exactly an' only what I tell him. I don't wanna have to make all the decisions all the time. I want a partner. I want a cohort, someone I can trust, who's smart enough to know what the right thing is,  _ most  _ of the time, brave enough to do it, an' powerful enough to make a real difference."

"Oh, I see," I snipe back at him, almost without meaning to because he is so earnest it gives me gooseflesh; and even more appalling, he’s  _ convincing. _ The man's not a foaming-at-the-mouth fanatic, but  _ he  _ wants to trust  _ me?  _ Has the Universe just shifted ninety degrees to rotate around the X rather than the Y axis? "And now that you've rescued me and become my  _ saviour _ , I'm just supposed to fall over myself and become that partner out of sheer gratitude, quite against my better judgement and worse nature? Is that it?"

I fully expect him to snap back at me, but he shakes his head and sighs tiredly instead. “If you know your Bible stories at all, I suppose you could say that by gettin’ you into the mess I was like Abraham takin’ Isaac up the mountain to sacrifice him. So whatever way you cut it, I don’t deserve much credit or thanks for gettin’ you out of it again, but in the end it was your own words that took the knife out of my hands.”

I study the glass of water I’m holding. I'm frankly surprised that he remembers anything about the Bible. I'm a few years his senior and I was only about six or seven when religious services were outlawed. I suppose in the American South they could have been a little harder to eradicate. Even now, Americans in general are just a little more resistant to authority than most people, and from my experience the Tuckers in particular are just a little more…Christian. 

As for me, Bible studies, for the year or two that we had them, were never really my thing (I used to smuggle weapons schematics into class in my prayerbook, and acquired an entirely undeserved reputation as a devout and pious little scholar), but I remember enough to make the connection. “And Liz Cutler was the angel,” I muse.

He gives a snort of laughter at that. “I don’t recall any mention of the angel slappin’ Abraham halfway into next Tuesday because he stepped out of line, an' believe you me, Liz came right to my quarters an' ripped me a new one the day your shuttlepod arrived.”

Sheer surprise at this revelation draws an answering chuckle from me. Liz is about three-quarters the size of Commodore Tucker, and the mental image of her marching to his cabin and whacking him on my behalf is so bizarre it would make a cat laugh.

“So, if I’m Isaac, you’re Abraham and Liz is the angel, who’s the ram?” I inquire, momentarily drawn into playing along.

He stops grinning. “I kind of thought that was the lab techs,” he says soberly. “I had to destroy the facility, I couldn’t risk Alpha survivin’ an' I couldn’t take the chance with a limited blast; he might not have been right beside the charge when it went off. There was a chance he might not even have been in the room.”

I’m not grinning now either. Nor, it must be said, am I awash with sympathy for the deceased. Out of the two of us, I’m the one with the most experience of the lab techs’ tender mercies, which were never merciful and rarely more tender than necessary. Getting blown into very tiny pieces was far kinder than what they’d have received if I’d ever got free, so on the whole I think they got off very lightly. I’d be surprised if most of them even knew they were dead.

No doubt he reads my lack of sympathy too, and understands the reason for it. “I know you won’t give a rat’s ass that any of them died, Malcolm, an' I don’t blame you for that, but for what it’s worth I don’t suppose any of them had a choice about what they were doin’ either. Any more than I did.”

“They  _ laughed _ ,” I say between my teeth.

He nods. “So did I.”

At that, I set the glass down, because if I keep hold of it there’s a good chance I’ll smash it in his face. Sometimes I almost wish he  _ would _ just compel me to do his bidding, press that button on his wristband until my racing heart brings me to my knees and makes me comply to save my life. It would be so much simpler, so much easier, so much less _ painful  _ than what he is doing by trying to reason with me and convince me. Sometimes, these little chats of ours bloody  _ hurt, _ and the strain I feel in my chest has nothing at all to do with the device he's placed there _.  _

“Yes, you did. But at least you’d earned the right to laugh. I did my damnedest to blind you, back on  _ Enterprise _ , actually if we’re being honest I tried to kill you. And that fucking little puppy Roberts was one of your pets, too, and I psyched him into killing himself so I could set the trap for you to walk into. So yes, I could have cut your balls off and made you eat them raw for laughing at me, for kicking me when I couldn’t kick you back. But I  _ understood. _ ”

And with that, I stand up and stalk to the viewing port, where I stand looking out at the stars.

Though if we’re being  _ exceptionally  _ honest, I can’t actually see them for the tears.

**Author's Note:**

> If you've enjoyed this, please leave a review.


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